The Sustainable Materials Laboratory welcomes motivated students for master and semester projects.
Master projects
Mycelium-textile composite materials
Mycelium-based materials are increasingly researched as a green material with potential in a wide range of applications, including as a source of non-animal chitosan, or in composite materials such as packaging, non-animal leathers, and insulation. The promise of these materials is that they offer a new way to grow materials from living organisms, in many cases acting as a carbon sink by sequestering carbon from lignocellulose waste streams that might otherwise be incinerated. Even if grown on a synthetic diet, these materials avoid much of the environmental harm caused by animal husbandry and the petroleum industry, offering meaningful alternatives to many of the products of these industries.
Simply, mycelium materials are grown from fungi provided with the nutritional requirements for growth. As mentioned, often the nutrition is sourced from lignocellulose waste streams, mimicking the role of wood-degrading fungi in nature, which can break down complex substrates into smaller nutrients that can then be ingested by the fungi. Indeed, this mechanism, whereby solid nutrition is both broken down and merged into a cohesive mass through a growing and interconnected filamentous mycelium network is the phenomenon that underpins all myco-composites, whether produced by solid or submerged fermentation.
In the Sustainable Materials Laboratory, we aim to explore how solid nutrition can be used to tailor the properties of the resulting myco-composites, indeed not only through the inclusion of non-fungal solid matter (e.g., lignocellulose) but by modifying the properties of the mycelium filaments themselves. This “solid nutrition” can be in the form of colloidal nanoparticles or larger macroscopic fragments, with a range of general properties dictated by their origin and processing. At SML, we ask how the properties of myco-materials can be tailored based on the source of nutrition and the extent to which it is digested (or not), while at the same time aiming to produce functional materials based on the interplay between the fungi and its environment of growth.
In this project, a collaboration with Glatfelter, we aim to better understand how fungi grow on technical fabric scaffolds with different compositions (cellulosic, conventional polymers) and architectures (e.g., density), studying the impact of scaffold characteristics on the grown mycelium. The project will contribute to a view of how scaffold properties translate into the properties of the grown material, so that we can eventually begin to optimize for the intended application sphere(s).
We are looking for a student, either a master’s student or a master’s intern, to begin this project in the Spring of 2024. Interested candidates are directed to send a cv and statement of interest directly to Prof. Tiffany Abitbol ([email protected]), with Dr. Wenjing Sun ([email protected]) in cc’.
Please put the title of the project as the subject of your email.
Semester projects
Mycelium-textile composite materials
Mycelium-based materials are increasingly researched as a green material with potential in a wide range of applications, including as a source of non-animal chitosan, or in composite materials such as packaging, non-animal leathers, and insulation. The promise of these materials is that they offer a new way to grow materials from living organisms, in many cases acting as a carbon sink by sequestering carbon from lignocellulose waste streams that might otherwise be incinerated. Even if grown on a synthetic diet, these materials avoid much of the environmental harm caused by animal husbandry and the petroleum industry, offering meaningful alternatives to many of the products of these industries.
Simply, mycelium materials are grown from fungi provided with the nutritional requirements for growth. As mentioned, often the nutrition is sourced from lignocellulose waste streams, mimicking the role of wood-degrading fungi in nature, which can break down complex substrates into smaller nutrients that can then be ingested by the fungi. Indeed, this mechanism, whereby solid nutrition is both broken down and merged into a cohesive mass through a growing and interconnected filamentous mycelium network is the phenomenon that underpins all myco-composites, whether produced by solid or submerged fermentation.
In the Sustainable Materials Laboratory, we aim to explore how solid nutrition can be used to tailor the properties of the resulting myco-composites, indeed not only through the inclusion of non-fungal solid matter (e.g., lignocellulose) but by modifying the properties of the mycelium filaments themselves. This “solid nutrition” can be in the form of colloidal nanoparticles or larger macroscopic fragments, with a range of general properties dictated by their origin and processing. At SML, we ask how the properties of myco-materials can be tailored based on the source of nutrition and the extent to which it is digested (or not), while at the same time aiming to produce functional materials based on the interplay between the fungi and its environment of growth.
In this project, a collaboration with Glatfelter, we aim to better understand how fungi grow on technical fabric scaffolds with different compositions (cellulosic, conventional polymers) and architectures (e.g., density), studying the impact of scaffold characteristics on the grown mycelium. The project will contribute to a view of how scaffold properties translate into the properties of the grown material, so that we can eventually begin to optimize for the intended application sphere(s).
We are looking for a student, either a master’s student or a master’s intern, to begin this project in the Spring of 2024. Interested candidates are directed to send a cv and statement of interest directly to Prof. Tiffany Abitbol ([email protected]), with Dr. Wenjing Sun ([email protected]) in cc’.
Please put the title of the project as the subject of your email.