U of A names 6 teams to get Big Idea Challenge money - Arizona Daily Star
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U of A names 6 teams to each get $250,000 through Big IdeaChallenge
Prerana Sannappanavar
Jun 6, 2025
The University of Arizona has named six teams as winners of its Big IdeaChallenge. Each will receive up to $250,000 over two years in seed money toseek “novel solutions to grand challenges.”
The six teams of experts include individuals ranging from undergraduate students tosenior faculty. The teams presented proposals to “accelerate transdisciplinary projectswith the potential to transform lives, shape policy, drive economic impact and providetraining for the next generation of talent,” UA said in a news release.
The new initiative is sponsored by the university’s Office of Research andPartnerships, and the proposals were judged by a selection panel including SeniorVice President for Research and Partnerships Tomás Díaz de la Rubia.
The Big Idea Challenge covers six overarching focus areas: Data, information systemsand artificial intelligence; defense and national security; energy and environmentalsustainability; the future of health and biomedical sciences; the human experience;and space sciences.
The teams selected “are not only pushing scientific boundaries, they are buildingsolutions with real-world impact for Arizona and the world,” Díaz de la Rubia said inthe news release.
They also showed they have “the power to attract major external funding.”
The challenge initially received 72 proposals from 19 units across the university, ofwhich 14 were selected to present their proposals in a “venture capital-style pitchevent” on May 12. The eight of those teams that aren’t awardees will receive $5,000 inseed funding to continue advancing their proposals.
The six winning teams will receive support from UA Research Development Services,Lewis-Burke Associates and Foundation Relations to identify funding opportunities,as well as support for technology transfer and public engagement from Tech LaunchArizona and Tech Parks Arizona.
The teams and their projects are:
— Convergent digital health for remote access: Srikar Adhikari with VigneshSubbian, Shu Fen Wung, Shravan Guruprasad Aras, Nirav Merchant, Nicole andLifeng Lin.
— Summoning microbial allies to reduce nitrogen fertilizer dependencyin modern agriculture: Mark Beilstein, Rebecca Schomer, Matthew M. Mars andClaire Darnell McWhite.
— Making space for off-Earth scalable cloud computing and datainfrastructure: Krishna Muralidharan, Robert Norwood, Karthik Kannan, RobertoFurfaro and Elizabeth Baldwin.
— From early Earth to Mars: “Advancing an integrated landscape terraformationscience of how life transforms planets with a multi-scale collaboratory digitaltwinning of Biosphere 2:” Scott Saleska, Jennifer L. Croissant, Cristian RomanPalacios, Solange Duhamel and Ken McAllister.
— Heat and health resilience innovation consortium: Amelia Gallitano-Mendel, Freya Spielberg, Kacey Ernst, Heidi Brown and Mona Arora.
— Invest in TIME: “A new $4 million University of Arizona facility poised for globalleadership in interdisciplinary earth hazards research:” Charlotte Pearson, BryanBlack, Joe Giacalone, Soumaya Belmecheri and Ashraf Moradi.
The Big Idea Challenge will return in 2027 with a new call for proposals, UA says.
The University of Arizona's Biosphere 2 near Oracle. One of the UA's Big Idea Challenge winners, titledFrom Early Earth to Mars, is about "the science of how life transforms planets" and will involve a "digitaltwinning of Biosphere 2."