NSF Backs $19 Million National Biological Observatory to Map Life in 3D

The United States is about to gain a new kind of scientific landmark, one that will not sit on a mountaintop or beneath a radio telescope array, but inside laboratories where some of the smallest structures of life are rendered visible in three dimensions. The U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded $19 million to the University of California San Diego and the University of Vermont to design and build a National Connectomics and Ultrastructure Volume Observatory, or NCUVO, a coast-to-coast research infrastructure intended to make extraordinary imaging capabilities available to scientists across the country. The five-year construction project, announced by UC San Diego, aims to convert biological samples into usable scientific data at a scale and completeness that no single laboratory currently can achieve, opening new avenues in neuroscience and the basic biology of life.

The central problem the observatory addresses is one of access. The most advanced volume imaging technologies, capable of resolving cellular and subcellular architecture in three dimensions, are today concentrated in a handful of specialized laboratories around the world. Researchers who lack proximity to such facilities often cannot pursue questions that depend on high-resolution structural data, no matter how important those questions may be. NCUVO is designed to change that equation by integrating advanced high-performance electron microscopy, artificial intelligence, advanced computing and powerful data networks into a single coordinated system. The goal is a pipeline that takes a biological sample from preparation through imaging, processing and analysis, delivering interpretable datasets to investigators who study biology, medicine and the life sciences.

Leadership of the project is split between the two institutions. Neuroscientist Davi Bock, PhD, at the University of Vermont will lead and coordinate the effort, with UC San Diego Distinguished Professor of Neurosciences and Bioengineering Mark Ellisman, PhD, serving as co-principal investigator alongside Doug Taatjes, PhD, director of UVM’s Microscopy Imaging Center. Of the $19 million in new funding, approximately $15.68 million will directly support the procurement of advanced tools and the recruitment of new staff at UVM, while $3.32 million will fund the use of shared advanced imaging and high-performance computing resources at UC San Diego. The division of labor reflects the complementary strengths each campus brings to the observatory design.

Coordinated from UVM’s Larner College of Medicine, the effort will establish state-of-the-art high-throughput electron microscopy in Vermont, while UC San Diego’s National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, known as NCMIR, will contribute deep expertise in sample preparation and complementary advanced microscopy techniques. Data management and processing will be handled in conjunction with the San Diego Supercomputer Center, or SDSC, at UC San Diego’s Halıcıoğlu School of Data Science and Computing. Together, these three nodes form the skeleton of the observatory: instruments that image, expertise that prepares and contextualizes samples, and cyberinfrastructure that stores, curates and distributes the resulting data.

Ellisman, who directs NCMIR, framed the initiative as a deliberate shift in how the nation treats its most powerful imaging technologies. In his view, the observatory’s design is about transforming the latest sample preparation, multimodal imaging and computational technologies into a shared national capability rather than a specialty available only to a few. At NCMIR, his team will help provide the means to turn raw microscopy image data into something that can be interpreted to advance understanding of biological processes. By combining those capabilities with UVM’s new imaging instruments and SDSC’s resources for advanced cyberinfrastructure, the project aims to empower scientists around the country to complete studies that compare many samples at different levels of detail, a task that has historically been impractical outside the largest research groups.

The data challenge is enormous. Once the observatory is established, it will generate millions of gigabytes of imagery, volumes that dwarf what most laboratories can organize and analyze on their own. Guiding the project’s data curation efforts is Ilkay Altintas, PhD, chief data science officer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and principal investigator of the NSF-funded National Data Platform. Her team will bring expertise in organizing, processing and sharing large scientific datasets, connecting the observatory’s images with NSF-supported national computing resources so that the data do not simply accumulate but become actively usable by the research community.

Altintas emphasized that the infrastructure is intended to open new windows into how living systems process information, making advanced biological imaging more accessible than ever before. Drawing on the expertise of the SDSC and the capabilities of the National Data Platform, UC San Diego will help the imaging community design and validate scalable, reproducible workflows that connect imaging data with the computing power needed to turn remarkable images into new discoveries. Reproducibility is a recurring theme in the project’s design: by standardizing how samples are prepared, imaged and processed, the observatory hopes to produce datasets that other scientists can trust, reuse and build upon.

To test whether the system can handle the diversity of real-world research, four pilot projects will exercise the observatory across different organisms, sample sizes and scientific needs. One will examine how connections in the mouse hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory, change following learning. Working with Ellisman’s team at UC San Diego and Anton Maximov’s laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute, scientists will trace circuits involving neurons and their synapses marked as active in establishing a new memory, effectively watching the structural footprint of learning take shape. Another pilot will compare retinal circuitry across species to investigate how visual systems are suited to different environments; Bock points to sharks navigating murky versus clear water as the kind of comparative question such data could address. The third and fourth projects focus on single-celled organisms, including a study of how the parasite Toxoplasma gondii crosses the blood-brain barrier to cause toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease spread through contaminated food and cat litter.

The five-year effort is structured to culminate in a tested design, pilot datasets and an implementation plan for operating the infrastructure as a facility for the nation, a true national observatory in the tradition of shared astronomical resources but pointed inward at the machinery of life itself. Education is also a key component, with undergraduate teaching materials and training opportunities planned around the pilot data, ensuring that these new scientific resources are not merely available but that scientists know how to use them. Bock argues that the scale of the undertaking is precisely the point: there is much about the natural world that remains incompletely understood, and unlocking those secrets requires research efforts occurring at a far greater scale than any individual laboratory can manage alone.

The potential payoff extends well beyond the pilot questions. While the initial projects are expected to produce fundamental breakthroughs in basic biology, the discoveries that follow could reshape understanding of neurodegenerative diseases and, eventually, help scientists discover tomorrow’s medicines. Bock is candid about the uncertainty at the heart of the enterprise, noting that no one can predict what the observatory will find, and that unpredicted discoveries are exactly why the country has historically invested in basic research. If the NCUVO succeeds, the smallest structures of life, from the synaptic connections of a learning mouse to the invasive machinery of a single-celled parasite, will become visible to a far broader community of scientists than ever before, and the next generation of biological insight may come from anywhere in the country rather than from a privileged few institutions.

Subject of Research: Construction of a National Connectomics and Ultrastructure Volume Observatory for high-resolution 3D biological imaging

Article Title: UC San Diego and University of Vermont share $19 million from NSF to build National Biological Observatory

Article References: UC San Diego and University of Vermont share $19 million from NSF to build National Biological Observatory. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: National Science Foundation, connectomics, electron microscopy, UC San Diego, University of Vermont, NCUVO, neuroscience, San Diego Supercomputer Center, biological imaging, data curation, Toxoplasma gondii, hippocampus