Google.org Funds 12 AI Projects to Accelerate Scientific Research

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Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, has selected 12 organizations, including universities, nonprofits and startups, to receive funding from its $20 million ‘AI for Science’ program, backing work that uses AI to accelerate research in health, agriculture, biodiversity and energy.

The awards are intended to help researchers analyse complex data, shorten research cycles and tackle scientific problems that can take years or decades to solve.

Google.org said the aim is to help researchers use AI to analyse complex data and shorten research cycles that often take years or decades.

“These teams aren’t just using AI to synthesize and process data,” said Maggie Johnson, Vice-President and Global Head of Google.org. “They are using it to break through the most significant obstacles across scientific domains like health, agriculture and biodiversity to turn discoveries into real-world solutions.”

Several of the funded projects focus on health and life sciences. UW Medicine is applying AI to its Fiber-seq technology to study the largely unexplored portions of the human genome in an effort to better understand rare diseases. 

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is developing an AI system that analyses neural data in real time to study how thoughts and memories form. 

French startup Spore.Bio is working on an AI-powered scanner designed to cut the time needed to detect drug-resistant bacteria from days to less than an hour.

In agriculture and food systems, the Sainsbury Laboratory is using AI models to predict how plant immune systems interact with pathogens, potentially accelerating the development of disease-resistant crops. 

The Periodic Table of Food Initiative is building an AI platform to map thousands of unknown molecules in food that affect nutrition and flavour. 

At the University of California, Berkeley, researchers are studying livestock microbiomes to identify ways to reduce methane emissions from cattle.

Other funded projects focus on biodiversity, climate and energy. 

The Rockefeller University is automating genome sequencing to speed up the creation of genetic reference data for millions of species. 

The UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre is using large language models to compile global plant distribution maps. 

The Swiss Plasma Center is standardising fusion energy data to support AI-driven analysis, while the University of Liverpool is combining AI with autonomous laboratory systems to search for new materials for carbon capture.

Google.org said all recipients have agreed to make their datasets and tools publicly available.

Johnson said the goal is to ensure the work can benefit researchers beyond the funded projects.

“Science is the cornerstone of human progress,” she said. “While the world’s problems are becoming more complex, the pace of new discovery is actually slowing. We created this fund to help researchers achieve in years what used to take decades.”

The program builds on Google’s earlier AI-for-science efforts, including protein structure prediction tools, but shifts the focus toward supporting external researchers. Google.org said it plans to continue backing similar initiatives as it looks to test whether AI can meaningfully accelerate scientific discovery across disciplines.