Center: NSF Engineering Research Center for Transformation of American Rubber through Domestic Innovation for Supply Security (TARDISS)

The Generation-4 NSF Engineering Research Center titled “Transformation of American Rubber through Domestic Innovation for Supply Security: TARDISS” will lead fundamental research towards US natural rubber biomanufacturing. Currently the single commercial source of natural rubber is the tropical rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis), with production areas all outside of the United States.

TARDISS will use a systems engineering approach to integrate engineering with biology, biotechnology, agriculture, and other disciplines optimizing alternative plants to produce entirely new natural rubber materials at scale. The TARDISS team will collaborate with communities, farmers, processors and rubber manufacturers to enable biomanufacturing-based natural rubber production optimized to large parts of the US, with a focus on marginal agricultural lands.

TARDISS will enable a circular biomanufacturing economy that respects natural systems, including pollinator services by the new domestic crops, water recycling and re-use, additional CO2 capture, and an estimated 2 million jobs tied to US soil. Engineering workforce development will provide training in this new U.S. area, also include those with untapped potential that are currently underutilized in the workforce.

The outcomes will be a sustainable domestic rubber industry and a new, young workforce converging engineering and agriculture trained through a new American Rubber Academy.

The “U.S. Sunlight to Materials” vision motivating the systems engineering approach of TARDISS is encapsulated by two hypotheses: #1: The U.S. can replace imported natural rubber (NR) with rubber from domestic crops, utilizing marginal agricultural lands, hydroponic systems, and new extraction methods; and #2: The U.S. can replace imported goods with products made with home-grown natural rubber.

TARDISS will integrate engineering with biology and other science disciplines via the following three research thrusts: 1: BioEngineering will converge engineering, biochemistry, enzyme chemistry, and molecular biology to fundamentally understand how plants naturally produce rubber. Natural variety will be combined with genetic approaches to tailor hydroponic dandelion to produce new NR variants and transfer the knowledge to the guayule and mountain gum plant species. 2: Crop Engineering will converge plant and agricultural engineering to develop and disseminate new “smart” crop production practices for all three crops. 3: Latex/Rubber Engineering will converge engineering, materials/polymer science and engineering, chemistry, and physics to invent extraction methods to produce consistent high-performance latex and rubber and new processing methods for products.

Furthermore, TARDISS will invent enabling technologies in field and hydroponic systems, industrial scale latex and rubber extraction methods, and novel processes-for-products and bring these to communities. A seamless integration of scalable biology, engineering, and science, while co-developing economically scalable pathways with domestic stakeholders, will be critical for success in Convergent Research.

The outcomes will be a sustainable domestic rubber industry and a new, young workforce converging agriculture and engineering trained through a new American Rubber Academy in collaboration with the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society. The TARDISS Innovation Ecosystem will bring together American business leaders and entrepreneurs, researchers, students, national labs, and communities, and features novel programs such as the Piranha Pit to encourage innovation.

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.