Diwakar Shukla, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has received a five-year, $1.75 million Pivot Research Award from Simons Foundation International to develop a transformative, artificial intelligence-enabled approach to crop engineering aimed at making plants more resilient and productive in a changing climate.
In 2022, Shukla received a Pivot Fellowship award from the Simons Foundation to help him pivot his research from computational chemistry to experimental plant biology, with mentoring from the late Stephen P. Long, Ikenberry Endowed Chair Emeritus of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences at Illinois. In the research phase of this award, Shukla will be mentored by Plant Biology professor Andrew Leakey in translational crop science to validate engineered plant proteins both in plants and on field.
“I am thankful to my mentors Professor Long and Professor Leakey for their support and guidance,” Shukla said. “It is challenging to pivot to a new field but their mentorship has provided me the platform to not only acquire new skills but also integrate the ideas from two distinct fields.”
"Diwakar has skills in computational biology and artificial intelligence, plus a vision for how they can be applied to plant biology, which make him exceptionally well poised to have tremendous impact on our ability to make fundamental discoveries and to engineer improved crops,” Leakey said. “I am really looking forward to working with him on this project.”
Traditional crop engineering methods typically rely on manipulation of plant genes, for example by turning genes on or off, introducing genetic material from other species, or making small structural changes based on known protein models. While effective in some cases, these approaches often overlook the fact that proteins are not static objects. Rather, they are constantly moving and interacting at the atomic level, and these motions are central to how they function.
“Current approaches rarely use the dynamic information, nor do they take advantage of recent advances in machine learning,” Shukla said. “This limits our ability to precisely design plant proteins for better traits like drought resistance or improved nutrient use.”
Shukla’s research will address this gap by creating a fully integrated platform that combines high-throughput experiments, computer simulations and AI-driven design. The project aims to experimentally and computationally map plant membrane transport proteins at exceptionally high resolution – down to individual building blocks – to understand how even subtle changes reshape their behavior and performance. This will allow scientists to engineer and validate thousands of protein sequences quickly, something that has never been done for complex plant proteins like those in cellular membranes.
“Ultimately, this work could lead to faster, smarter crop engineering, helping us design plants that thrive in changing climates and meet global food demands,” Shukla said.
Established in 2022, the Simons Foundation Pivot Fellowship program supports accomplished researchers who have excelled in their current discipline and who demonstrate a strong curiosity and drive to contribute to a new field.
Shukla is a James W. Westwater Professorial Scholar in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois, where he also holds faculty appointments in The Grainger College of Engineering’s Department of Bioengineering; Chemistry and Plant Biology in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences; the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB); the Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA) and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Leakey is the Michael Aiken Chair of Plant Biology at Illinois and Director of the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation. He also holds faculty appointments in Crop Sciences, CDA, NCSA, and IGB.