The Sloan Foundation is accepting application for the Matther-to-Life program. The program aims to sharpen our scientific understanding of the physical principles and mechanisms that distinguish living systems from inanimate matter, and to explore the conditions under which physical principles and mechanisms guide the complexification of matter towards life.
Research grants in Sloan’s Matter-to-Life program seek to advance theoretical and experimental efforts aimed at unraveling the physical principles and mechanisms that distinguish living systems from inanimate matter, and that explore whether and how physical principles guide the complexification of matter towards life.
The program will prioritize those projects making the most compelling case for how the proposed research will advance our scientific understanding of life’s distinctiveness, and that pursue research directions not already well supported by federal funders. The program will not support biomedical or disease-related research. Sloan seeks to support well-conceived biology/physics/chemistry/engineering projects that explore the matter-life boundary in comparatively simple systems, rather than animal-based or social-science experiments that study complex higher-level organism behaviors. They recognize that both multi-disciplinary and exploratory work is needed to advance matter-to-life science, and the program is open to projects with these features when they are important to advancing the proposed science.
Grantmaking proceeds along three interrelated focus areas: Building Life, Principles of Life, and Signs of Life.
Grant-seekers with a relevant research project or meeting idea should submit a Letter of Inquiry of no more than two pages to Program Director Ernie Glover at mattertolife@sloan.org. For more about what to include in a Letter of Inquiry, please refer to our Letter of Inquiry Guidelines.