The ARS SCINet and AI Center of Excellence (AI-COE) funded ten postdoctoral fellowship proposals in FY2026. The program was again very competitive, with many more proposals submitted than we could support. Information about the funded projects is provided below.
ARS SCINet and AI Center of Excellence Postdoctoral Fellowships Program - FY2026 Awards
| Title | Mentor | Co-mentor(s) |
|---|---|---|
| FungalCAD: A DNA Foundation Model for Fungal Pathogen Risk, Adaptation, and Surveillance | Carson Andorf | Hye-Seon Kim |
| AI-Driven Discovery of High-Impact Genetic Variants for Rice Grain Quality Improvement | Jeremy Edwards | |
| Employing Machine Learning to Optimize Productivity on Dairy Farms with Automated Milking Systems | Elizabeth Ann French | Luis M Peña-Lévano (University California - Davis) |
| Floral resources mapping via transparent upscaling – from the field to the drone to the satellite | Alexander Hernandez | |
| Bovine-NT: Bridging the Genotype-Phenotype Gap with Deep Genomic Learning | George Liu | |
| AI Transfer Model of Rangeland Plant Species | Peter Olsoy | Stella Copeland |
| Forecasting highly pathogenic avian influenza risk using a spatiotemporal deep-learning-based model on the SCINet high performance computing cluster | Joseph Purswell | |
| Artificial Intelligence for Food Safety: Machine Learning Solutions for Forever Chemical Challenges | Yelena Sapozhnikova | |
| To Predict AND to Explain: Developing a Biologically Informed Neural Network Library for ARS, SCINet and their Stakeholders | Jacob Washburn | |
| Applying bulk and single-cell transcriptomics to identify predictors and facilitators of immune protection against highly virulent porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome viruses (PRRSVs) currently circulating in the United States | Jayne Wiarda |