Google.org has announced 12 recipients of its $20 million AI for Science fund, backing academic, nonprofit, and startup teams that are applying AI to accelerate discovery across health, agriculture, and biodiversity. The initiative is framed as a response to a widening gap between the growing complexity of global challenges and the slowing pace of scientific progress, with Google.org positioning AI as a way to help researchers achieve in years what previously took decades.
In naming the new cohort, Google.org said the awardees are not only using AI to synthesize and process data, but also to push past bottlenecks that have limited progress in key scientific domains. A central requirement of the program is a commitment to open science, with an expectation that funded work will generate open-source datasets and solutions that can be reused beyond each project’s original application.
In life sciences and health, Google.org highlighted multiple projects aimed at making biological data more predictive and clinically actionable.
UW Medicine plans to use its Fiber seq technology to generate long-read maps of poorly understood regions of the human genome, with the goal of clarifying the genetic drivers of rare diseases.
Cedars Sinai Medical Center is building BAN map, an AI-guided tool designed to analyze neural data and adjust experimental conditions in real time to maximize discovery during limited lab windows, targeting a deeper understanding of thought and memory.
The Technical University of Munich is developing a multiscale foundation model intended to connect cell-level signals to organ-level behavior, enabling clinicians to simulate disease progression and evaluate interventions digitally.
Makerere University’s Infectious Disease Institute is applying AI tools, including the EVE framework and AlphaFold, to anticipate how malaria parasites evolve and identify drug resistance earlier.
France-based Spore.Bio is developing an AI-powered scanner intended to reduce the time required to detect dangerous drug-resistant bacteria from days to under an hour.
In agriculture and food systems, the fund is backing efforts to build resilience, improve nutrition, and advance sustainability as climate pressures intensify.
The Sainsbury Laboratory is launching Bifrost, which uses AlphaFold3 to predict how plant immune receptors interact with pathogens from genome sequences, aiming to speed the development of disease-resistant crops.
The Periodic Table of Food Initiative is building an AI-powered platform to map thousands of previously unknown food molecules that influence nutrition and flavor, a step the organization says could support healthier diet design. At UC Berkeley, the Innovative Genomics Institute is studying cow microbiomes, using AI to identify interactions that could be edited to reduce livestock methane emissions.
On biodiversity and planetary resilience, Google.org highlighted projects that scale mapping, modeling, and protection of natural systems while advancing clean energy and carbon capture pathways.
Rockefeller University is working to modernize genome sequencing pipelines with AI-driven automation for data curation, intended to accelerate production of high-quality genomic references across the planet’s roughly 1.8 million species.
UNEP WCMC plans to use large language models to scan millions of scientific records and close “data desert” gaps, producing a distribution map for 350,000 known plant species to inform conservation decisions.
EPFL’s Swiss Plasma Center is focused on standardizing fusion energy data and experiments so AI models can learn from collective results and potentially accelerate progress toward carbon-free fusion power.
The University of Liverpool is developing a Hive Mind approach that links autonomous lab robots with human scientists and AI agents to speed discovery of new materials for global-scale carbon capture.
Google.org said the cohort reflects how AI can translate scientific progress into practical outcomes, from preventing disease to protecting crops and ecosystems. The organization also signaled that it expects to continue expanding support for groups pursuing breakthrough science, while encouraging broader participation in future opportunities tied to its mission to solve critical global challenges.
