Google names winners of $20 million funding for AI science projects

Google’s philanthropic arm has named the 12 projects that will share in a multimillion-dollar funding pot dedicated to further scientific research using artificial intelligence. 

Google.org, the division that works with non-profits in areas such as education, science and community initiatives, launched its AI for Science fund in 2024. It was set up to distribute $20 million in funding, as well as $2 million of credit towards Google cloud services, to help organisations “tackle the world’s most complex scientific challenges” using AI, Google.org said.

The 12 winners, hailing from across Europe, north America and Africa, are working on projects in three areas: life sciences, agriculture and sustainability.

Life sciences projects make up five of the 12 winners, with winners planning to use AI to decode the mysteries of human biology, as well as the pathogens that target it. 

European and African winners of Google’s AI science project funding

French microbiology initiative Spore.bio wants to use AI to do away with the petri dish: it uses photonics to gather information on which individual microorganisms are present in samples of food or cosmetics products, for example. The samples are then analysed by AI to check which pathogens are present and in what quantities, a process that can take minutes with AI compared to days with traditional methods. 

In Uganda, Makerere University’s Infectious Disease Institute meanwhile will be using AlphaFold, Google’s AI tool for predicting the structures of proteins based on the amino acids that they’re comprised of, to identify how the parasites that cause malaria evolve. In doing so, it hopes to understand why and when they become resistant to common treatments for the disease. 

The Sainsbury Laboratory, based in Norwich, is also using AlphaFold as part of its project to breed disease-resistant crops, by predicting how plants’ immune receptors will respond to pathogens such as viruses or fungi. 

The United Nations’ Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, based in Cambridge, UK, is also using AI for conservation: its funding will go towards a project that will use LLMs to analyse scientific records to build a map of where the Earth’s 350,000 species of plants are distributed across the planet. 

US winners of Google’s AI science project funding

Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre is creating an AI tool that can refine experiments into the workings of the human brain, unpicking how its nerve cells work to create memory and thought.

UC Berkley’s Innovative Genomics Institute is using AI to better understand how the genetic blueprints of the microbes that make up cows’ gut microbiomes can be “edited” to reduce their methane emissions. 

Moving to New York, the Rockefeller University’s project will catalogue the genes that make up earth’s plants and animals “to aid in conservation and medicine”, according to Google.org. It will use AI for data curation.

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