Iowa State University's Plant Sciences Institute (PSI) has awarded funding to investigators in three colleges in an effort to stimulate high-risk, high-reward research in the plant sciences.

The awards are part of the Plant Sciences Institute's Faculty Scholars program. The new initiative was spearheaded by PSI director Patrick Schnable and takes a different approach than a traditional internal seed grant program. Instead of funding specific research projects, the program will invest $2 million annually to provide investigators with flexible funding they may use in a variety of ways -- salaries, acquisition of equipment, seminar support, consulting fees and other related expenses -- to engage in innovative and high-risk research that may lead to important breakthroughs in PSI's focus area of predictive phenomics.

Predictive phenomics is a complex and rapidly emerging discipline in which scientists attempt to understand in detail the effects of plant genotype (genetic makeup) and environment, and the interaction between the two, on plant phenotype (traits). That understanding will lead to the development of better predictive models for plant breeding.

Schnable said, I'm very pleased with the caliber of talent and diversity of disciplines represented by this inaugural group of PSI Scholars. By investing in people instead of specific projects, I'm confident that this program will enable the Scholars to make real progress in deepening our understanding of predictive phenomics through new biological insights, new computational methods to analyze phenomics-related data sets, and new measurement tools, such as small field-based sensors. These findings will lead to the development of new crop breeding techniques for improved yield and enhanced yield stability under a variety of challenging and changing environmental conditions.

In addition to receiving funding for up to three years, Scholars will participate in an ongoing weekly workshop series designed to help establish strong collaborations among plant scientists, engineers and computational scientists. It is anticipated that this interdisciplinary approach to problem solving will spur development of novel approaches and technologies and prepare teams of investigators to submit successful proposals for additional large-scale external funding.

I'm encouraged by the fact that half of the PSI Scholars are plant biologists and half are engineers and computational scientists, said Schnable. Working in collaboration, these researchers from diverse disciplines have the potential to significantly advance the field of predictive phenomics.

PSI Faculty Scholars

• Madan K. Bhattacharyya, agronomy
• Ludovico Cademartiri, materials science and engineering
• Hui-Hsien Chou, genetics, development and cell biology
• Liang Dong, electrical and computer engineering
• Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, mechanical engineering
• Stephen H. Howell, genetics, development and cell biology
• Carolyn J. Lawrence, genetics, development and cell biology
• Thomas Lübberstedt, agronomy
• W. Allen Miller, plant pathology and microbiology
• Dan Nettleton, statistics
• Maria G. Salas Fernandez, agronomy
• Lie Tang, agricultural and biosystems engineering
• Lizhi Wang, industrial and manufacturing systems engineering
• Steven A. Whitham, plant pathology and microbiology
• Yanhai Yin, genetics, development and cell biology
• Jianming Yu, agronomy

The Plant Sciences Institute is dedicated to enhancing Iowa State University’s international prominence in the plant sciences through a research focus on predictive phenomics. PSI researchers build on traditional ISU strengths in plant breeding and crop improvement, crop genetics and genomics, bioinformatics and statistics. PSI fosters new collaborations with engineers and computational scientists, and embraces big data techniques and technologies to acquire, manage, analyze and interpret large, complex data sets.