PROJECTS By Topic - Any - Astronomy Earth & Planetary Science Genetics & Developmental Biology Global Ecology Matter at Extreme States Plant Science Science Education By Department - Any - Administration Carnegie Academy for Science Education (CASE) Earth and Planets Laboratory Embryology Geophysical Lab Global Ecology HQ Observatories Plant Biology Terrestrial Magnetism Advanced Education Programs Carnegie is renowned for its post-doctoral and graduate student fellowship programs, which operate on each of the Carnegie campuses. Our fellows participate fully in the institution’s vigorous intellectual life, and have complete access to the laboratory instruments and facilities at the... Explore this Project Astrobiology Carnegie was once part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI).Carnegie Science at Broad Branch Road was one of the founding members of the 1998 teams who partnered with NASA, and remained a member through several Cooperative Agreement Notices (CANS): CAN 1 from 1998 -... Explore this Project BioEYES Together with Dr. Jamie Shuda, Steve Farber created a Science Outreach Program, Project BioEYES, that incorporates life science and laboratory education using zebrafish. The outreach program has two main components: educating teachers through hands-on training and tours of our zebrafish facility,... Explore this Project Carnegie Academy for Science Education Scientific literacy is now recognized to be crucial for our nation's progress in the 21st century. The Carnegie Institution, a pre-eminent basic research organization, has fostered the development of scientific knowledge since the early 20th century. For many years, this meant the training of... Explore this Project Carnegie Astrometric Planet Search Along with Alycia Weinberger and Ian Thompson, Alan Boss has been running the Carnegie Astrometric Planet Search (CAPS) program, which searches for extrasolar planets by the astrometric method, where the planet's presence is detected indirectly through the wobble of the host star around the... Explore this Project Carnegie Planet Search Carnegie's Paul Butler has been leading work on a multiyear project to carry out the first reconnaissance of all 2,000 nearby Sun-like stars within 150 light-years of the solar system (1 lightyear is about 9.4 trillion kilometers). His team is currently monitoring about 1,700 stars, including 1... Explore this Project Carnegie Science Venture Grants CALL FOR PROPOSALS Following Andrew Carnegie’s founding encouragement of liberal discovery-driven research, the Carnegie Institution for Science offers its scientists a new resource for pursuing bold ideas. Carnegie Science Venture grants are internal awards of up to $100,000 that are... Explore this Project Digital genome Revolutionary progress in understanding plant biology is being driven through advances in DNA sequencing technology. Carnegie plant scientists have played a key role in the sequencing and genome annotation efforts of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and the soil alga ... Explore this Project High Lava Plains Volcanism Starting in 2005, the High Lava Plains project is focused on a better understanding of why the Pacific Northwest, specifically eastern Oregon's High Lava Plains, is so volcanically active. This region is the most volcanically active area of the continental United States and it's relatively... Explore this Project High Pressure Diamond Project The Geophysical Laboratory has made important advances in the growth of diamond by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Methods have been developed to produce single-crystal diamond at low pressure having a broad range of properties. Explore this Project Intracontinental Deformation And Surface Uplift In Mongolia High-elevation, low relief surfaces are common on continents. These intercontinental plateaus influence river networks, climate, and the migration of plants and animals. How these plateaus form is not clear. Researchers are studying the geodynamic processes responsible for surface uplift in the... Explore this Project Kepler: A Search for Habitable Planets Carnegie scientists participate in NASA's Kepler missions, the first mission capable of finding Earth-size planets around other stars. The centuries-old quest for other worlds like our Earth has been rejuvenated by the intense excitement and popular interest surrounding the discovery of... Explore this Project Marilyn Fogel Endowed Fund for Internships Established in June of 2016 with a generous gift of $50,000 from Marilyn Fogel and Christopher Swarth, the Marilyn Fogel Endowed Fund for Internships will provide support for “very young budding scientists” who wish to “spend a summer getting their feet wet in research for the... Explore this Project Math for America DC Fifty years ago, Americans led the world in math and science, claiming some of the most important inventions and technological breakthroughs of the 20th century. Today, American 15-year-olds rank 25th in math compared to their peers worldwide. Math ƒor America DC strives to reclaim... Explore this Project Mechanisms of cell division, homeostasis, aging, and cell fate The Zheng lab studies cell division including the study of stem cells, genome organization, and lineage specification. They study the mechanism of genome organization in development, homeostasis—metabolic balance-- and aging; and the influence of cell morphogenesis, or cell shape and... Explore this Project Monitoring Global Net Primary Production Until now, computer models have been the primary tool for estimating photosynthetic productivity on a global scale. They are based on estimating a measure for plant energy called gross primary production (GPP), which is the rate at which plants capture and store a unit of chemical energy as biomass... Explore this Project Ocean Acidification Research Coral reefs are havens for marine biodiversity and underpin the economies of many coastal communities. But they are very sensitive to changes in ocean chemistry resulting from greenhouse gas emissions, as well as to pollution, warming waters, overdevelopment, and overfishing. Reefs use a mineral... Explore this Project Rosetta Mission Andrew Steele joins the Rosetta team as a co-investigator working on the COSAC instrument aboard the Philae lander (Fred Goesmann Max Planck Institute - PI). On 12 November 2014 the Philae system will be deployed to land on the comet and begin operations. Before this, several analyses of the comet... Explore this Project Small RNAs in egg and sperm cell development Approximately half of the gene sequences of human and mouse genomes comes from so-called mobile elements—genes that jump around the genome. Much of this DNA is no longer capable of moving, but is likely “auditioning” perhaps as a regulator of gene function or in homologous... Explore this Project Superdeep Diamonds and Mantle Convection Superdeep diamonds are tiny time capsules carrying unchanged impurities made eons ago and providing researchers with important clues about Earth’s formation. Diamonds derived from below the continental lithosphere, are most likely from the transition zone (415 miles, or 670km deep... Explore this Project The Anglo-Australian Planet Search The Anglo-Australian Planet Search (AAPS) is a long-term program being carried out on the 3.9-meter Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) to search for giant planets around more than 240 nearby Sun-like stars. The team, including Carnegie scientists, uses the "Doppler wobble" technique... Explore this Project The biology of reproduction studying ovarian stem cells of the fruitfly The Spradling laboratory studies the biology of reproduction. By unknown means eggs reset the normally irreversible processes of differentiation and aging. The fruit fly Drosophila provides a favorable multicellular system for molecular genetic studies. The lab focuses on several aspects of egg... Explore this Project The Carnegie Hubble Program The Carnegie Hubble program is an ongoing comprehensive effort that has a goal of determining the Hubble constant, the expansion rate of the universe, to a systematic accuracy of 2%. As part of this program, astronomers are obtaining data at the 3.6 micron wavelength using the Infrared Array... Explore this Project The Carnegie Supernova Project The recent discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate has profoundly affected physics. If the universe were gravity-dominated then it should be decelerating. These contrary results suggest a new form of “dark energy”—some kind of repulsive force—is... Explore this Project The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey The Carnegie Irvine Galaxy Survey is obtaining high-quality optical and near-infrared images of several hundred of the brightest galaxies in the southern hemisphere sky, at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory to investigate the structural properties of galaxies. For more see http... Explore this Project The Carnegie-Spitzer-IMACS Redshift Survey The Carnegie-Spitzer-IMACS (CSI) survey, currently underway at the Magellan-Baade 6.5m telescope in Chile, has been specifically designed to characterize normal galaxies and their environments at a distance of about 4 billion years post Big Bang, expresses by astronomers as z=1.5. The survey... Explore this Project The Earthbound Planet Search Program The Earthbound Planet Search Program has discovered hundreds of planets orbiting nearby stars using telescopes at Lick Observatory, Keck Observatory, the Anglo-Australian Observatory, Carnegie's Las Campanas Observatory, and the ESO Paranal Observatory. Our multi-national team has been... Explore this Project The Giant Magellan Telescope Project The Giant Magellan Telescope will be one member of the next class of super giant earth-based telescopes that promises to revolutionize our view and understanding of the universe. It will be constructed in the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Commissioning of the telescope is scheduled to begin in... Explore this Project The role of organelles in the cell nucleus that synthesize and process RNA The Gall laboratory studies all aspects of the cell nucleus, particularly the structure of chromosomes, the transcription and processing of RNA, and the role of bodies inside the cell nucleus, especially the Cajal body (CB) and the histone locus body (HLB). Much of the work makes use of the giant... Explore this Project Understanding the musculoskeletal and hypothalamic systems The Fan laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms that govern mammalian development, using the mouse as a model. They use a combination of biochemical, molecular and genetic approaches to identify and characterize signaling molecules and pathways that control the development and maintenance of... Explore this Project Vera Rubin Fellowship The fund supports a postdoctoral fellowship in astronomy that rotates between the Carnegie Science departments of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, D.C., and the Observatories in Pasadena California. Explore this Project Visualizing Lipid Metabolism and Signaling In mammals, most lipids, such as fatty acids and cholesterol, are absorbed into the body via the small intestine. The complexity of the cells and fluids that inhabit this organ make it very difficult to study in a laboratory setting. The goal of the Farber lab is to better understand the cell and... Explore this Project Water Quality Anna Michalak’s team combined sampling and satellite-based observations of Lake Erie with computer simulations and determined that the 2011 record-breaking algal bloom in the lake was triggered by long-term agricultural practices coupled with extreme precipitation, followed by weak lake... Explore this Project Working Group on Extrasolar Planets (WGESP) The WGESP was charged with acting as a focal point for research on extrasolar planets and organizing IAU activities in the field, including reviewing techniques and maintaining a list of identified planets. The WGESP developed a Working List of extrasolar planet candidates, subject to revision. In... Explore this Project RESOURCES FOR Employees COVID-19 information for staff Human Resources/Careers Trustees Visitors Media Contacts Anti-Discrimination Policy Equal Employment Opportunity Policy LECTURES & EVENTS Capital Science Evenings, D.C. Neighborhood Lecture Series, D.C. Astronomy Lecture Series, CA SUPPORT OUR WORK Make a Donation How to Give Planned Giving WHO WE ARE About Departments Careers & Internship Archives Contact Privacy Policy DEPARTMENTS Earth and Planets Laboratory Embryology Global Ecology Observatories Plant Biology Copyright 2020 Carnegie Institution for Science, 5251 Broad Branch Road, NW, Washington, DC 20015 P: (202)-387-6400 F: (202)-387-8092