Engineering Biology & Materials Science
Food & Agriculture Challenge:

Increase and improve the nutritional content and value of food.

Advance alternative proteins and cellular or cultivated meats.

  • Technical Achievement: Improve prototyping matrices for more intricate biomolecule and cellular scaffolding.
  • Technical Achievement: Advance the incorporation of additional nutritional components besides proteins in lab-grown meats.
  • Technical Achievement: Use biologically-derived polymers (e.g., cellulose, hyphae, mycelia) to improve textures of plant-based proteins.

Materials to detect and control ripening.

  • Technical Achievement: Engineer materials that produce or incorporate cyclodextrins, cyclodextrin-like molecules.
  • Technical Achievement: Engineer the application of interface materials for stems or surfaces of harvested crops that would seal or provide a means to introduce desired chemicals for the control of ripening.
  • Technical Achievement: Materials to detect and report biomolecules associated with over-ripening/spoilage in food storage facilities (e.g., ethylene detecting materials in apple warehouses).
Last updated: January 19, 2021 Back