Workshop: Developing Community in Engineered Living Materials; Bozeman, Montana; 13 July 2023

工程生物材料(ELM)是一类新兴的材料，由于在材料上或材料内包含活细胞，因此具有额外或独特的功能。ELMS有望在材料开发、制造和使用方面提供更好的可持续性。例如，将活细胞用作(微型)工厂将有助于从可持续的投入中产生理想的材料，例如利用单糖或废物生产生物聚合物。目前，ELM的发展受到在这一领域工作的学术和行业团队之间有限的成果、想法和创新交流的阻碍，因为ELM编程没有专门的会议。一个主要的挑战是，这个新领域的参与者跨越了许多研究社区，因此现有的会议只聚集了榆树社区的小部分。这笔赠款支持两次会议，将榆树社区聚集在一起，交流想法、挑战和解决方案，推动该领域向前发展，目标是建立一年或两年一次的ELM会议系列。第一个是在材料研究会春季会议附近的晚间会议，召集与会者，讨论为期一天的夏季榆树研讨会的优先事项。第二次会议是为期一天的研讨会，将汇集材料科学、工程、微生物学、合成生物学以及社会、法律和伦理考虑等领域的榆树研究团队。预计将有学术界和业界人士参加。研讨会将邀请演讲者、小型工作组和主持讨论，以确定优先研究领域，确定核心挑战和潜在解决方案，并定义这个新兴社区的需求。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Engineered Living Materials (ELMs) are an emerging class of materials that have additional or unique functionalities resulting from the inclusion of living cells on or within the material. ELMs are expected to provide improved sustainability in material development, manufacturing, and use. For instance, using living cells as (micro)factories would facilitate generation of desirable materials from sustainable inputs, such as the production of biopolymers from simple sugars or waste materials. Currently, the development of ELMs is hindered by limited exchange of findings, ideas, and innovations between academic and industry teams working in this area because ELM programming does not have a dedicated conference. A major challenge is that participants in this new field span many research communities, and thus established conferences only assemble small cross-sections of the ELM community. This grant supports two meetings to bring together ELM community to exchange ideas, challenges, and solutions that move the field forward with the goal of establishing an ELM conference series on an annual or biannual schedule.This grant supports two meetings. The first is an evening meeting adjacent to the Materials Research Society Spring conference to assemble attendees and discuss the priorities for the one-day summer ELM workshop. The second meeting is a one-day workshop which will bring together teams working in ELM research across the fields of materials science, engineering, microbiology, synthetic biology, as well as social, legal and ethical considerations. Academic and industry participants are expected. The workshop will feature invited speakers, small working groups, and moderated discussions to define priority research areas, identify central challenges and potential solutions, and define the needs of this emerging community.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.