At the heart of the center's activities lie synthetic biology tools, developed by Zhang. Bacteria can be reprogrammed to create novel, protein-based, biodegradable polymers with precisely controlled properties – but by combining these processes with computational simulations and machine learning from the outset, both the discovery and optimization of polymers can be accelerated. And along the way, barriers to technology adoption will also be tackled by researchers in mass communication, industrial organization, and techno-economic analysis.
“We’re not only working to address the challenge of plastic waste and pollution, we’re asking... how do we get producers and consumers to replace a mature and well-established technology with new technology?” highlights Foston. “Too often, questions about adopting technologies aren’t part of the conversation until the deployment phase.”
“So, at SMARC we're building an ecosystem that does great basic and applied research, and also gets out a really useful set of technologies to industry and consumers,” he adds.
A different approach
For Foston, leading the new center follows decades of research on polymers, and how to use biomass and plastic waste resources to produce value-added products – taking a progressively interdisciplinary approach. As a young student, he recalls being interested in science and engineering without conventional constraints. “I never thought of fitting myself neatly into any one discipline,” he says. “ I really was just interested in understanding how things work, and if I was lucky enough to understand how to use a particular approach, then I would take that.”
In his Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry with Professor Haskell Beckham, at Georgia Institute of Technology, U.S., Foston got to grips with myriad analytical tools, including nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and neutron scattering. Then, as a postdoctoral researcher with Professor Arthur Ragauskas, also at Georgia Tech, he used NMR to understand the chemistry and dynamics of lignocellulose. Whilst understanding how to deconstruct this complex biopolymer to form biomass, biofuels, and biomaterials, Foston also realized the power of interdisciplinary research.
“Art [Ragauskas] was part of the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center that was designed around 'team science', collaboration and interdisciplinary science to solve big problems,” he says. “There was a large team of principal investigators working on biomass, biofuels, and bioproducts - and I'm suddenly learning things about synthetic and systems biology – terms I'd never heard of before.”
Read the full article on page 9 in Wiley Analytical Science Magazine Volume 3 - May/24.
