Overview

Environmental biotechnology focuses on the technologies and tools to enable deployment of bioengineered systems in the land, air, water, and human landscapes for purposes related to remediation, natural resource management, environmental monitoring, and species management. In contrast to other sectors – including industry and agriculture – this technology is deployed in the environment in a process design that is inherently poorly controlled. Technical and societal challenges therefore reflect its broad and uncontrolled nature. The Challenges, Aims, and Objectives in this sector are highly parallel to those that also appear in Energy, Food & Agriculture, and Health & Medicine.

Societal Challenges & Science/Engineering Aims

Address and mitigate climate change.

These Science and Engineering Aims are designed to help overcome the identified Societal Challenge:

• Enable adaptation of ecosystems to climate change.

• Enable and advance carbon sequestration from the environment.

Expand tool sets for bioremediation and resource recycling.

These Science and Engineering Aims are designed to help overcome the identified Societal Challenge:

• Enable better, more advanced bioremediation of petrochemical pollutants including plastics.

• Improve bioremediation and revitalization of water and soil.

• Enable more efficient and advanced resource recovery.

Controlled deployment of engineered organisms to improve ecosystem biodiversity, robustness, and the well-being of inhabitants.

These Science and Engineering Aims are designed to help overcome the identified Societal Challenge:

• Improve engineering of select insects for safe, effective environmental deployment.

• Improved engineering of select plants and animals for safe, effective, environmental deployment.

• Develop high-resolution biosensors for environmental monitoring and detection.

Enable sustainable, more environmentally-friendly materials and infrastructure development.

These Science and Engineering Aims are designed to help overcome the identified Societal Challenge:

• Enable sustainable production of environmentally-friendly consumable materials.

• Enable the production of sustainable construction materials.

• Improved management of the built environment using bio-designed and -enabled tools and technologies, including replacement of non-natural infrastructure with engineered organisms.