Matter-to-Life
The Sloan Foundation's Matter-to-Life program funds research on the physical principles and mechanisms that distinguish living systems from non-living matter, focusing on building, understanding, and detecting life.
Funder: Sloan Foundation
Due Dates: Rolling (Letters of Inquiry accepted year-round)
Funding Amounts: Seed Grants: up to $50K/yr for 2 yrs | Theory Investigator: up to $120K/yr for 5 yrs | Research Award: up to $300K/yr for 5 yrs | Research Collaboration: up to $500K/yr for 5 yrs
Summary: Supports research on the physical principles and mechanisms distinguishing living systems from inanimate matter, focusing on building life, principles of life, and signs of life.
Key Information: Letters of Inquiry required; no biomedical/disease-related or mirror organism research supported.
Description
The Sloan Foundation's Matter-to-Life program funds curiosity-driven research that seeks to deepen scientific understanding of how life emerges from matter. The program is organized around three main focus areas:
- Building Life: Constructing artificial or synthetic systems to study life-sustaining processes and life-like behaviors.
- Principles of Life: Uncovering the physical principles and mechanisms—such as biomechanics, thermodynamics, and emergent phenomena—that distinguish living systems.
- Signs of Life: Investigating distinctive signatures, metrics, and detection methods for identifying and quantifying life.
The program encourages multi-disciplinary and exploratory projects, especially those that probe the physical distinctiveness and organizational complexity of living systems. The ultimate goal is to explain the matter-life nexus and foster new research lines in this emerging field. The program does not support biomedical or disease-related research, nor research aimed at creating mirror organisms.
