Renee N. Juhans
Headquarters, Washington, DC December 1, 1998
(Phone: 202/358-1712)
RELEASE: 98-217
NASA ANNOUNCES RESEARCH GRANTS IN MICROGRAVITY BIOTECHNOLOGY
NASA has selected 48 researchers to receive grants totaling approximately $33 million to conduct microgravity biotechnology research. Forty of the grants are to conduct ground-based research, while the remaining eight are flight definition efforts. Fourteen of these grants are for continuation of work currently being funded by NASA, but the majority (34) represent new research efforts.
Sponsored by NASA's Office of Life and Microgravity Science and Applications, this research allows investigators to take advantage of a low-gravity environment to improve understanding of fundamental physical and chemical processes associated with biotechnology. The research support by NASA under this announcement includes protein crystallization, cell science studies, and new technology development. This research may affect such important areas as structure-based drug design, tissue engineering, and biosensor development.
The investigators will have NASA's microgravity research facilities such as aircraft flying parabolic trajectories and sounding rockets at their disposal; the flight-definition investigators will work toward experiments on the International Space Station.
NASA received 165 proposals in response to its announcement in this research area. These proposals were peer-reviewed by scientific and technical experts from academia, government and industry. In addition, those proposals selected for flight definition were reviewed in terms of engineering feasibility by a team from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Huntsville, AL.
A list of awardees (by state), their institutions, and research titles can be found below