Transforming the nation’s ability to prepare for and respond to future biological threats by leveraging distinctive DOE capabilities
Initiated in 2022 by the DOE Office of Science, Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment (BRaVE) is designed to leverage DOE’s distinctive national laboratory capabilities to support U.S. preparedness and response to future potential biological crises. BER-supported BRaVE projects are using computational and experimental approaches to study the molecular basis of host-pathogen interactions. These insights can lead to new methods for disease detection and design of targeted therapies as well as advance understanding of plant pathogens of crops central to DOE bioenergy programs.
Current BRaVE Awards
The Office of Science supported 10 awards in 2023. These include multi-institutional teams, led by national laboratories with partners from other national laboratories and universities, including historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions. BER supported four of these new projects. Additional awards by the Advanced Scientific Computing Research and Basic Energy Sciences programs focus on developing more complete models of how epidemics spread, designing novel anti-pathogen materials, and providing innovations in DOE’s user facilities.
| Lead PI | Project | PI Organization | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starkenburg, Shawn | Decoding Host-Pathogen Dynamics with 4D (Epi)Genomics | Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) | 2023 |
| Cheung, Margaret | Enhancing Biopreparedness Through a Model System to Understand the Molecular Mechanisms That Lead to Pathogenesis and Disease Transmission | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) | 2023 |
| Mutalik, Vivek | Phage Foundry: A High-Throughput Platform for Rapid Design and Development of Countermeasures to Combat Emerging Drug-Resistant Pathogens | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) | 2023 |
| Liu, Qun | Unlocking the Molecular Basis of Plant-Pathogen Interactions to Create Resilient Bioenergy Crops | Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) | 2023 |
- 2023 Awards Overview brochure and accompanying LAB 23-295 Call for Proposals