Innovation in the Bioeconomy: Workshops to catalyze translation and partnerships

This award is intended to fund a series of five biotechnology-related workshops around the following themes (i) Feeding the Planet Sustainably, (ii) World Without Waste: a circular bioeconomy, (iii) Towards a Healthier Planet: from molecules to ecosystems, (iv) Biological Mitigation of Climate Change, and (v) Bioeconomy Ecosystem and Society. Each of these themes will have a set of four overarching goals (a) Examine biotechnology areas associated with significant societal challenge where increased research could yield translatable impacts; (b) Explore interdisciplinary science areas where a virtuous cycle of discovery and innovation over a sustained period is possible; (c) Identify areas ripe for partnerships that will leverage expertise and resources across sectors; and (d) Catalyze the research community to engage in translation, innovation, and partnership at speed and scale.

Overall, the workshops are intended to address the required needs to bridge the disconnect among discovery, innovation, and translation into practice by assembling for discussion the necessary expertise from interdisciplinary teams across academia and industry to co-generate knowledge, discovery, and innovation to enable the translation to practice at speed and scale. The five workshops will be held using an on-line platform.

The series of workshop will contribute to the enhancement and improvement of scientific, engineering, and/or educational activities by convening experts to address the societal challenges of producing food sustainably, creating a circular bioeconomy that will reduce waste, using advances in biotechnology to improve health, leveraging biotechnology to mitigate the impacts of climate change, and exploring the unique aspects of bioeconomy innovation ecosystems.

Advances in biotechnology, synthetic and engineering biology are producing rapid economic growth and are leading to novel biomaterials, transforming the food, agriculture and pharmaceutical industries, enabling new capabilities for information storage and renewable energy and creating new kinds of targeted medical therapies. To achieve the full translational potential of these research advances, there is a need to bring together experts and practitioners in biotechnology and associated fields from academia, industry, and other parts of the broader ecosystem of stakeholders to engage in a virtuous cycle of discovery and innovation that will yield societal impacts.

This series of five workshops, focused on different grand societal challenges, contemplates new paradigms of engagement between academic and industrial sectors that are necessary to create the requisite environment to foster both discovery and innovation that leads to rapid translation.

This award is co-funded by the Directorates for Biological Sciences; Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering; Engineering; Geosciences; Mathematical and Physical Sciences; and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences; along with the Office of Integrative Activities.

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.