John Templeton Foundation – Life Sciences Grants
The Life Sciences funding area supports research and engagement projects on the fundamental structures of the biological world, from the origin of life to synthetic biology across all the biological kingdoms. We support theoretical, empirical, and applied research on the biological mechanisms that produce life in its diverse forms.
We support research that advances the scientific understanding of fundamental characteristics of living systems, such as directionality, agency, memory, and adaptive navigation through complex problem spaces. These emergent properties cannot be fully understood in terms of known characteristics of an organism’s constituent parts, such as genes and cells. An adequate conceptual understanding remains elusive. We encourage submissions of novel project ideas that aim to elucidate or leverage the capacity of organisms to develop structures through information processes that go beyond the foundational rules of synthetic biology.