NSF awards inaugural TRAILBLAZER grants for groundbreaking engineering ideas

The U.S. National Science Foundation has announced the first grants in its Trailblazer Engineering Impact Award (TRAILBLAZER) program, a new $18-million activity to enable researchers with established records of creativity and paradigm-shifting outcomes to pursue novel engineering research projects that will open unexplored frontiers.

“Through the TRAILBLAZER program, NSF is enabling innovative researchers to explore new directions beyond today’s frontiers,” said Susan Margulies, NSF assistant director for Engineering. “Our investment in NSF TRAILBLAZER will lead to engineering impacts in biotechnology, sustainability, quantum technology and other areas that ultimately strengthen U.S. resilience and competitiveness.”

Each NSF TRAILBLAZER award will provide up to $3 million over three years for a project led by a single investigator in any engineering field, topic or methodology that is distinct from their prior work. 

The six new awards are listed below: 

TRAILBLAZER: Biodegradable living materials (Harvard University) will develop living materials to create robots that operate autonomously in natural environments and biodegrade when their job is done. 

TRAILBLAZER: Constructing photonic quantum systems by deterministic electron-driven atom positioning (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will develop a method for making perfect arrays of atoms that are needed to produce photonic quantum technologies at scale.

TRAILBLAZER: Overcoming the lignin barrier for valorization of forest biomass — a new paradigm for mitigation of catastrophic wildfires (the University of New Mexico, NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research jurisdiction) will create bio-based chemical feedstocks from forest debris using sustainable, new enzyme-based methods.

TRAILBLAZER: Quantum-Enabled Dial (QED) to control biochemical reactions and cell behaviors (Johns Hopkins University) will leverage electron spin, a quantum property, in engineered proteins to easily increase or decrease their activity using magnetic fields.  

TRAILBLAZER: Solving the grand self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) challenge (Boston University) will optimize self-amplifying RNA, increasing its cellular half-life, which will result in more protein production over a longer time period and the development of a versatile genetic tool. 

TRAILBLAZER: Super-Planckian far field radiation via non-equilibrium polaritons (Vanderbilt University) will develop approaches using polaritons, a type of energy carrier, to achieve super-efficient radiative cooling beyond the blackbody limit.

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