Collaborative Research: GCR: Accelerated Discovery of Synthetic Biological Materials

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This project aims to develop a pathway to transform the economy from petroleum derived plastics to bioplastics made of synthetic biological materials (SBM) manufactured by bacteria and derived from sustainable sources. A convergent team comprised of experts from synthetic biology, biotechnology, machine learning, social sciences, materials science, and mechanics will work on developing commercially viable, high-performance plastic fibers made of SBMs with the goal of building a pipeline that will both produce sustainable high-performance SBMs of the future and help train a diverse workforce for the future.The research activities focus on addressing key challenges by developing: (1) machine-learning tools to explore potential DNA sequences that can be programmed into bacteria for SBM biosynthesis, reducing the size the design and search space; (2) a transformative discovery pipeline for rapid identification of high-performance SBMs by integrating machine learning tools with first-principle simulations and experimentation that have varying cost and fidelity; and (3) an original economics and sociological framework linked to techno-economic, life-cycle, and supply-chain models to formulate strategies to steer SBMs to market adoption.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.