EFRI ELiS: Biosynthetic Additive Manufacturing of Living Building Materials

This award aims to integrate cutting-edge approaches in advanced manufacturing, synthetic biology, and materials science to transform microbe-engineered lignocellulosic biomass into a printable ink for biosynthetic additive manufacturing of 3D-printed living materials and structures for building applications. The integration of carefully designed microbial networks in printable lignocellulose inks will produce hierarchically structured organic-inorganic living composites with enhanced mechanical and thermal properties, increased carbon storage, self-healing capacity, and scalable and modular fabrication. The award’s vision is that the technical innovations will lead to positive social impacts through: fighting climate change with carbon-negative living materials; combating homelessness through smart and modular building materials production; and filling technical gaps in the nation's Biomanufacturing and Bioeconomy initiative. The research thrusts will be tightly coupled with comprehensive educational and outreach components, including new projects and contents in graduate courses, REU/K-12 activities such as Science Festival showcase, iGEM undergraduate team mentorships, living materials art exhibitions, and biomanufacturing outreach workshops to prepare future scientists and engineers from diverse backgrounds in the highly interdisciplinary research fields of biomanufacturing and living materials. The goal of the research is to adopt ecological concepts of biomineralization and repurpose the symbiotic principles of fungal-bacterial interactions to model and design living microbial networks within lignocellulosic-biomass-derived materials as ink for biosynthetic additive manufacturing and in situ modulation of the material's properties. The research objectives of this project include: 1) ink Development: Design, model, and produce biomass-derived, microbe-integrated, and printable biomaterials feedstock for in situ biomineral and biopolymer synthesis; 2) additive Biomanufacturing: 3D printing with living components to optimize the material's performance and customize the construction of living building materials and structures; 3) benchmarking and Optimization: characterize and optimize the performance of the 3D bioprinted materials and structures, including strength, thermal properties, self-healing capacities, fire resistance, and carbon storage. We will finally scale up ink production with local feedstock, and scale up the printability and biomanufacturing for Environmental Impact Analysis and Techno-Economic Assessment. The overarching focus will be on obtaining a better understanding of how the synergized interactions between microbe-consortia and inert components within the 3D-printed physical-biological system can be engineered to enhance the material's performance. The project will allow the exploitation of microbial interdependencies and fungal-bacteria interactions in novel ways to analyze their habitation, reproduction, metabolism, interaction, and biosafety in an engineered space across different time scales and physical dimensions. The project will also allow the PI to develop a new biomanufacturing process that seamlessly integrates 3D printing and the biosynthetic process for tailored materials design based on highly scalable and sustainable biomass materials as feedstock. Therefore, this project will enable novel strategies to magnify biomanufacturing capacity in hybrid living-manmade systems. 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.