EFRI ELiS: Autonomous Engineered Living Materials for Construction and Repair of Outdoor Built Environments

Engineered living systems (ELiS) for the built environment have the potential to attain a level of precision, control, and sustainability that is not achieved with traditional construction materials. The three primary aims of this project are to develop low-hydration ELiS that self-strengthen/repair, create hydroponic ELiS with bio-sustained function and biocontainment, and use additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing) techniques to fabricate fasteners, joints, and prototype panels for the built environment.

This project will meet the national need for advanced manufacturing methods for more sustainable built environments via reduced carbon footprint (reduced transport costs and greener production) and chemical circularity (chemical recycling of protein-based materials). This project also addresses the national need to develop the next generation of a highly skilled and diverse future workforce and will increase adoption of biological components in architectural design through outreach activities.

The overarching goal of this proposal is to address key fundamental challenges associated with the integration and sustenance of metabolically engineered microbial organisms in materials designed for the built environment. In order to propel ELiS forward and provide real-world engineering solutions for built environments, ELiS must have the requisite mechanical properties to be used for structural and constructural applications, be manufacturable as a variety of form factors, and need to be sustained under deployment conditions that may not naturally support the sustenance and proliferation of microbial organisms.

Native soil microbes and cyanobacteria will be utilized as the cellular platforms for genetic engineering and will be sustained for the lifetime of the material. The team will fabricate, model, and test capillary microfluidic channels that transport water and nutrients. The transformative scientific aspects of our proposal are (i) genetic engineering of microorganisms for dynamic and extreme environments, (ii) design and synthesis of mechanically stiff protein-based hydrogels for 3D printing ELiS, and (iii) the integration of capillary microfluidic channels for autonomous fluid transport.

Additionally, 3D printing enables the distributed manufacturing of parts, as well as custom designs that can be created by architects, engineers, and other users. Additive manufacturing techniques will be used to fabricate prototype fasteners, joints, and panels for the built environment. The project will also develop outreach activities to engage and recruit diverse citizen scientists and researchers with a design competition to introduce living materials into a “living” room.

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.