Our Mission
Overview:
The vision for Chemurgy 2.0 is to build capacity in advanced biomanufacturing so that Iowa will be known not only for addressing the human need for sustenance but also for using things that grow to meet broader human needs. The National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) aims to strengthen the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) capacity and capability of eligible jurisdictions, such as Iowa. In accordance with Iowa’s Science and Technology plan (2022), this Track-I award will build and integrate research capacity in two of Iowa’s core strengths: biosciences and advanced manufacturing and foster a robust, inclusive, accessible, diverse, and equitable STEM workforce. Formal partners in this award are Iowa State University (lead), University of Iowa, University of Northern Iowa, Dordt University, and Central College, but this program is to benefit all of Iowa.
Workforce Development Activities and Opportunities:
- Middle and high-school students throughout Iowa will have the opportunity to explore careers in advanced biomanufacturing through our partnership with the Iowa Department of Education.
- Our partnership with Science Bound includes expansion of the Learn and Earn program for high school students to include AP biology content.
- Undergraduate students have a variety of opportunities for research experiences at universities across Iowa, including programs for pre-service teachers, students who are from rural areas, and participants of the IINSPIRE LSAMP and George Washington Carver internship programs.
- We are working with the Iowa Student Internship Program to improve and expand the recruitment of undergraduate student participants.
- Alpha Alpha Alpha is a national honor society for first-generation college students. We will be helping to establish this society at our partner institutions and throughout the state.
- The addition of a “Biological and Biomanufacturing Systems” focus to ISU’s Industrial Technology program will have an earlier roll-out due to support from our program.
- Our data-driven approach to workforce development includes a social cognitive career theory-based investigation of factors driving student interest in biomanufacturing and the development of disciplinary identity.
Research Capacity Activities:
Our research projects serve as a scaffold for building sustained collaborations between Iowa’s bioscience research community and Iowa’s advanced manufacturing research community, thus building capacity in advanced biomanufacturing. These research projects fall within three focal areas:
- Additive manufacturing enables the production of complex parts for agricultural, transportation and biomedical applications from plastics instead of from metal. Historically, these plastics are derived from petroleum and some processes use molecules with a high toxicity. Our production of bioplastics for additive manufacturing (PAM) focal area will produce bio-based plastics with the required physical properties that can be used in additive manufacturing processes. This focal area includes the expansion of biopolymer characterization capacity at Central College.
- Biofibers, such as grasses, stover, hemp and silk, have been integral to humankind’s technology and society. Our fibers for flexible and rigid materials (FFR) focal area builds capacity in the form of new equipment at UNI and ISU and a new faculty hire for UI.
- Building upon Iowa's well-established ecosystem for the production of biological materials, in our proteins for diagnostics and therapeutics (PDT) focal area, we focus on building capacity for process scale-up from lab scale to pilot scale, including equipment for UI’s Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing.
Partnership with existing entrepreneurial education programs, such as the Great Lakes I-Corps Hub and National Manufacturing Institutes, will support the commercialization of our research.
- Our annual seed funding call will support high-risk, high-impact, potentially transformative research in emerging areas.
- In support of the new data science initiatives at UNI, we are supporting the expansion of high-performance computing resources and a new data science faculty hire.
The knowledge generated from all of our research efforts will be disseminated to stakeholders and Iowans.