WIN FREE SEQUENCING FOR YOUR RESEARCH
Our SMRT Grant programs support outstanding research that advances scientific discovery by providing free highly accurate long-read sequencing. Have an interesting project that could benefit from free sequencing? Apply for your chance to win.
2022 SMRT Grant Programs
2022 HiFi for Accuracy SMRT Grant Program is Now Closed
Thank you for your interest in the 2022 HiFi for Accuracy SMRT Grant Program. We are thrilled to have received many excellent submissions. Please check back, as the winners will be announced in the coming months on our blog.
Please join our mailing list for updates on our SMRT Grant programs.
Get to know the SMRT Grant program — Frequently asked questions
“If your genome isn’t HiFi, it’s no longer reference grade.”
— Kevin McKernan, Medicinal Genomics
Spotlight
SMRT Grant winner
“PacBio HiFi long-read sequencing is enabling a new look at human genomics. In our SMRT grant, we utilized this innovative technology to identify the relevant variation in a family with autism that had remained unsolved with previous technologies. Thank you to PacBio for funding our research and for helping us to not only find answers in this family, but to also support us in working towards Precision Genomics in autism.”
— Tychele Turner, Washington University in St. Louis
“HiFi reads really allow us to call accurate structural variations and other types of variations that you can’t actually see in something like with short-read sequencing.”
— Jeremy Schmutz, Faculty Investigator, HudsonAlpha Institute of Biotechnology
Co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota Genome Center
2021 Plant + Animal sciences SMRT Grant program
We are pleased to announce the winners of this SMRT Grant:
- Dr. Sean Myles, and his team, at Canada’s Apple Diversity Lab within the Faculty of Agriculture at Dalhousie University who are studying the tremendous natural diversity of apples and help breed new varieties that are tasty and require less chemical input to grow
Read more about these winners and their projects on our blog post: Announcing our Plant and Animal SMRT Grant winners: Sequencing a pangenome to feed a growing population
Co-sponsored by Maryland Genomics
2021 Microbial Genomics SMRT Grant program
We are pleased to announce the winner of this SMRT Grant:
- Mark Nicol of The University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia for his project to use HiFi sequencing to determine species-level profiling of the upper respiratory microbiota to predict asthma in young children.
For more on his project, read our blog post: Our latest SMRT Grant winner: HiFi sequencing to understand microbial world
Co-sponsored by the DNA Sequencing Center at Brigham Young University, CCGA, and BIOTOOLS
HiFi for accuracy SMRT Grant
We are pleased to announce the winners of this SMRT Grant:
- Claudia Gonzaga-Jauregui of International Laboratory for Human Genome Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico for her project to use HiFi sequencing to understand genetic disorders that remain unanswered even after deep characterization with other molecular tools and sequencing platforms.
- Sven Winter of Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre for his project to use HiFi sequencing to generate high-quality assemblies of two giraffe species to facilitate analysis of structural differences.
- Charlene Kahler of University of Western Australia for her project to use HiFi sequencing to conduct metagenomic analysis of oropharyngeal samples collected from individuals carrying meningococcal disease to identify factors involved in infection.
Read our blog post:SMRT Grant winners: When accuracy matters scientists choose HiFi sequencing
Co-sponsored by Icahn Institute for Data Science and Genomic Technology at Mount Sinai
Clinical research SMRT Grant program
We are pleased to announce the two winners of this SMRT Grant:
- Danielle Brandes of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf for her project to discover structural variants related to pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia that have been missed by other technologies.
- Jenny Taylor of Oxford University for her project to use HiFi sequencing to resolve structural variants and phase variants for a few participants in the UK’s 100,000 Genomes Project as a demonstration of how this approach could potentially help address unsolved disease cases.
Read our blog post: Announcing the winners of our clinical research SMRT Grant – two scientists at the forefront of discovery
2020 SMRT Grants
Co-sponsored by University of Louisville, GENTYANE, and Nucleome Informatics
2020 HiFi for All — Collaborations SMRT Grant program
We are pleased to announce the three winners of this SMRT Grant:
- Michael Metzger of Pacific Northwest Research Institute and team for their project to understand transmissible cancers in mussels
- Esaú Martínez of CIAG-IRIAF and collaborators for their project to generate a pangenome and pantranscriptome of the pistachio
- Ira Deveson of the Garvan Institute at University of Canberra and colleagues for their project to sequence the genome and transcriptome of the bearded dragon lizard
Read our blog post to learn more about these exciting collaborative research projects.
Co-sponsored by Maryland Genomics
2020 Microbial Genomics SMRT Grant program
Awarded to Ali R. Zomorrodi of MassGeneral Hospital for Children and Harvard Medical School for his project to use HiFi sequencing for strain-level study of intestinal and breastmilk microbiota in celiac disease. Read blog post.
Co-sponsored by DNA Sequencing Center at Brigham Young University
2020 Plant + Animal sciences SMRT Grant program
Awarded to Carlos Guarnizo of Universidad de los Andes for his project to help bring harlequin toads back from the brink of extinction. Read blog post.
2019 SMRT Grants
Co-sponsored by Georgia Genomics and Bioinformatics Core, Earlham Institute, and DNA Link, Inc.
2019 HiFi for all SMRT Grant program
We are pleased to announce the three winners of this SMRT Grant:
- Ellie Armstrong of Stanford University for her project to elucidate the genomics of the African leopard
- Daniel Sheward of the University of Cape Town for his project to establish the largest longitudinal HIV sequence database ever assembled
- Jianjun Liu of the Genome Institute of Singapore for his project to generate an Asian reference genome
Read our blog post to learn more about these exciting projects.
Co-sponsored by the HudsonAlpha Genome Sequencing Center
2019 Human genetics SMRT Grant program
Awarded to Tychele Turner of Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine for her project to address the mysteries of autism with HiFi sequencing. Read blog post.
Update! Hear about Tychele Turner’s results: Human Genomics in the new era of long-read sequencing
2019 Neuroscience SMRT Grant program — co-sponsored by the University of Liverpool Centre for Genomic Research
Awarded to Cleo van Diemen at the University Medical Center Groningen for her project to find new genetic mechanisms associated with spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA). Read blog post.
2019 Targeted sequencing SMRT Grant program — co-sponsored by McDonnell Genome Institute
Awarded to Stéphanie Tomé of the Centre de Recherche en Myologie at Sorbonne Université/INSERM for her project to determine the size of repeat expansions in myotonic dystrophy type 1. Read blog post.
Update! Explore Stéphanie Tomé’s results: SMRT sequencing detects clinically significant repeat changes in triplet expansion disorders
2019 RNA sequencing SMRT Grant program — co-sponsored by Icahn Institute for Data Science and Genomic Technology at Mount Sinai
Awarded to Christopher Cogle of the University of Florida for his project “Inhibiting Splicing Repression as a New Therapeutic Strategy in Acute Myeloid Leukemia.” Read blog post.
Co-sponsored by Maryland Genomics at the Institute for Genome Sciences
2019 Metagenomics SMRT Grant program
Awarded to Joe Taylor of the University of Salford for his project to explore microbial communities in the rain forests of Borneo. Read blog post.
Co-sponsored by Histogenetics
2019 Plant + Animal sciences SMRT Grant program
Awarded to Susannah Sample of University of Wisconsin-Madison for her project to sequence the genome of German Shepherds. Read blog post.
2018 SMRT Grants
Co-sponsored by University of Delaware Sequencing & Genotyping Center
2018 Plant + Animal sciences SMRT Grant program
Awarded to Shawn Trojahn and Joanna Kelley of Washington State University for their project entitled “Identifying Transcript Isoforms in Grizzly Bears with Human Therapeutic Value.” Read blog post
Update! Hear about this project from Shawn Trojahn: Using grizzly bears to unlock the biomedical promise of hibernation
2018 Plant + Animal SMRT Grant program — co-sponsored by GENEWIZ
Awarded to Arne Nolte of the University of Oldenburg and Fritz Sedlazeck of Baylor College of Medicine for their project to assemble the genome of the European cavefish. Learn more about this project
Co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota Genomics Center
2018 Structural Variation SMRT Grant program
Awarded to Kristen Sund of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center for her project “Unsolved Mysteries: Sequencing to Solve Neurologic Disease with Structural Rearrangements.” Read blog post
Update! Hear about Kristin Sund’s results: Increasing solve rates for rare and Mendelian diseases with long-read sequencing
2018 Iso-Seq SMRT Grant Program — co-sponsored by RTL Genomics
Awarded to Xiaochang Zhang of the University of Chicago for his project “Uncovering mRNA Splicing Diversity in Cerebral Cortex Development.” Read blog post
Co-sponsored by University of Maryland’s Genomics Resource Center
2018 Microbial Genomics SMRT Grant program
Awarded to Mark Webber of Quadram Institute for his proposal to study preventing infection for premmies. Read blog post
2017 SMRT Grants
2017 Plant + Animal SMRT Grant program
Awarded to Bill Ballard of University of New South Wales and Claire Wade of the University of Sydney for their Dancing with Dingoes project. Learn more about this project
Co-sponsored by GENEWIZ
2017 Structural variant SMRT Grant program
Awarded to Stephen Scherer of The Centre for Applied Genomics at The Hospital for Sick Children for his project “Using Low-Coverage PacBio SMRT Sequencing to Find Structural Variation Mutations in Autism Families with Multiple Affected Individuals.” Read blog post
2017 Cancer SMRT Grant program
Awarded to Andrew Ludlow of the University of Michigan for his proposal to investigate the splicing of transcripts regulated by the oncogene NOVA1. Read blog post
2017 Microbial SMRT Grant Program
Awarded to Alexander Shumaker of Rutgers University for his research on the coral microbiome. Read blog post