Pictured from left: (top row) Elliot Barnhart, Mikayla Borton, John E. Carlson, Jonathan Conway, Julian Damashek and Ronald de Vries; (middle row) Emily Dieter, Ashlynn Hord, Uwe John, Sagar Khare, Erin Manzitto-Tripp and Lucie Poulin; (bottom row) Alex Probst, Matthew Sullivan, Dawn Sumner, Christopher Ward, Andrew Willoughby and Kristina Young
The JGI is excited to announce the 18 scientists selected for our 2025 Community Science Program Annual Call.
These projects include cutting-edge research into microbial communities — from freshwater estuaries reshaped by dam removal to Antarctica’s photosynthetic mats — to reveal how these systems adapt and contribute to global biogeochemical cycles. Additional efforts in metabolic engineering and biocatalyst design will target sustainable energy solutions, focusing on lignocellulosic thermophiles and polymer degradation.
“We are very excited to see the outcome of the innovative research being proposed by this year’s CSP investigators,” said Tanja Woyke, Deputy Director of JGI’s User Programs. “Many of these projects are large in scale and involve multiple collaborators, bringing together diverse expertise to address complex scientific questions.”
Of these 18 scientists, eight have never been involved in a JGI proposal. Three are previous collaborators, though have never served as a principal investigator. The other seven researchers are returning, including one previous New Investigator awardee.
The CSP Annual call is focused on large-scale genomic science projects relevant to the DOE’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) missions in sustainable biofuel and bioproducts production, global carbon and nutrient cycling, and biogeochemistry.
You can learn more about this call, as well as our smaller-scale New Investigator and Functional Genomics calls, here on our website.
See below for the full list of 2025 CSP Annual Call awardees.
| Name | Institution | Proposal Title |
| Barnhart, Elliott | U.S. Geological Survey | Exploring fungal contributions to carbon cycling in deep subsurface organic-rich environments across depth and salinity gradients |
| Borton, Mikayla | Colorado State University | Decoding the unifying microbial metabolic controllers on carbon cycling across saturated soils |
| Carlson, John E. | Penn State University | Super-pangenomes for gene discovery and climate-resiliency research and breeding in eastern oak syngameons |
| Conway, Jonathan | Princeton University | Promoter discovery and characterization to enable metabolic engineering in lignocellulosic thermophiles |
| Damashek, Julian | Hamilton College | Genome-resolved and activity-based archaeal ecology in a euxinic meromictic lake (Fayetteville Green Lake, NY, USA) |
| de Vries, Ronald | Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute (Netherlands) | Revealing the diversity of primary carbon metabolism across the fungal kingdom |
| Dieter, Emily | Gettysburg College | Investigation of Radical S-Adenosyl-L-methionine enzymes hypothesized to be involved in methanogenic archaea metabolism |
| Hord, Ashlynn | University of Tennessee, Knoxville | Are rear-edge or relict populations reservoirs for resilience genes? Biogeographic patterns of genetic variation and introgression in a riparian tree species |
| John, Uwe | Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (Germany) | The role of niche adaptability in the evolution of the harmful alga, Alexandrium catenella: Dinophyceae |
| Khare, Sagar | Rutgers University | Targeted high-throughput design of biocatalysts for degrading selected polymers |
| Manzitto-Tripp, Erin | University of Colorado, Boulder | Engineering drought-tolerant pennycress via loss-of-function alleles observed in an aridity extremophile |
| Poulin, Lucie | Université de Nantes, Laboratoire de Biologie et pathologie Végétales (France) | Plant-plant interactions mediated by rhizosphere microbiota using the model: Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh — Phelipanche ramosa (L.) Pomel |
| Probst, Alex | University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany) | Genomic expansion of freshwater algae and their interacting bacteria and viruses |
| Sullivan, Matt | The Ohio State University | Ecogenomics and biogeochemical modeling of DNA and RNA viruses across terrestrial-marine interfaces |
| Sumner, Dawn | University of California, Davis | Seasonal metabolism changes across redox gradients in photosynthetic Mats, Lake Fryxell, Antarctica |
| Ward, Christopher | Bowling Green State University | Opening the floodgates: how hydroelectric dam removal led to reshuffling of downstream microbial plankton community and biogeochemical potentials in a freshwater estuary |
| Willoughby, Andrew | Duke University | Gesneriaceae genomes to unlock novel biology for plant regeneration |
| Young, Kristina | U.S. Department of Agriculture | Investigating microbial gene expression and metabolite profiles in response to varying resource levels in dryland soils |