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Please join us on Tuesday, June 22nd at 11:45am CT/12:45 ET as two students from the ATS Course Synthetic Futures, Sara Selmić and Kelly Xi, present their work and innovation at Bio Design Challenge 1, an international educational program and competition that fosters high school and university students to explore future applications of emerging biotechnologies. Over 60 schools from five continents are competing to show off the best and brightest at the crossroads between biology and design. Students from around the world are competing with visions of how to create a sustainable future, use biology to question contemporary norms, and steer biotechnology into bright futures shaped by perspectives of design.
This year, we’re sending a team composed of two graduate students that has created a brand new bio-material designed to replace single use plastics, particularly in the shipment and packaging of food. They have been working with designers and students from ATS and AIADO as well as researchers from UIC and Northwestern University to strengthen not only their design but their scientific research on their novel material. Their project was deemed so exciting by the contest that they are one of only 2 teams selected to additionally compete beyond the overall prizes for the special Barilla Prize for Regenerative Living Ecosystems.Their work will be broadcast by the BDC on Youtube, and will be shown in an online exhibition.
Photo caption: PermaPak biopolymer, created by Sara Selmić and Kelly Xi, is a marine and waste-stream solution that does not extract land resources. Designed with a regenerative life cycle, this novel material foregrounds biodegradability and the circularity of permaculture ecology.
