A co-created newsletter of resources and actions for climate biotech
Hello Climate Biotech Friends!
Homeworld Collective is a non-profit (501c3) that aims to grow the field of climate biotech. We want to help you deploy cutting-edge bioengineering approaches toward a positive future for Earth and its inhabitants.
We’ve met with over 500 people this past year, and we noticed a disconnect between funders, doers and thinkers across the space. We’re starting this newsletter to grow the community across the scientific and human aspects of climate biotech.
In this inaugural issue, we announce a $10K grand prize writing challenge with co-creator, Niko McCarty. We also share a sampling of exciting papers, funding opportunities, and job postings.
In nature, a confluence is a joining of rivers. As a newsletter, Confluence can become a joining of the many flows in climate biotech. This newsletter will best serve the community if it is co-created with the community. So, please send suggestions, links, resources and constructive ideas to hello@homeworld.bio. You’ll see “h/t” throughout the newsletter to say “hat tip” in gratitude to the people who linked us to content for Issue 1.
We’d love to hear from you.
If you have some time to help Homeworld, we’d appreciate a vote for our SXSW Panel “Against the Clock: Building Community in Climate Biotech!”
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Homeworld Ideas: A writing challenge to spread good ideas
$10k grand prize. Apply by October 1st.
We seek compelling ideas and visions of the future that explore how biology can be used to realize a sustainable and ecological world. We welcome any form of writing: essays, fiction, poetry, designs for imagined technologies, and so on. We can’t wait to read your submission.
Why are we doing this? Because part of our mission is to teach self-advocacy skills. As we say in our new blog post, writing is the water of ideas in which we swim. Writing is perhaps the most useful skill for self-advocacy. It can clarify thoughts, open doors, and close deals for you.
We also accept pseudonymous applications; whatever it takes you to write boldly.
Jobs, Funding, & Opportunities
Funding ($ looking for projects)
- Department of Energy SBIR/STTR Programs FY 2024 Topics for Phase 1 Release 1, July 2023. The Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) is participating, and here is the PDF of Topics for Release
- $10k Homeworld Ideas Essay Challenge, due October 1st
- $50k for Negative Emissions Technology via Footprint Coalition + Experiment.com Science Engine.
- $50k for AI for interspecies communication via Footprint Coalition + Earth Species Project + Experiment.com Science Engine.
- $10k Cellular Agriculture Challenge via Footprint Coalition + Experiment.com Science Engine. (h/t Bre Duffy at New Harvest)
- $25-100k Fast Grants for bio x climate at 50Years Manifest Climate, due August 31st.
Funding (Projects looking for $)
- [C]Worthy, a non-profit team, is seeking funds to become a Focused Research Organization for measurement, reporting and verification of ocean-based carbon dioxide removal. For more information you can email Matt. (h/t Adam Marblestone at Convergent Research)
- Doc Brown, currently at Spark Climate, is seeking funds to build Cowbell Labs, a Focused Research Organization for agricultural methane measurement. For more information you can email Doc. (h/t Erika Reinhardt at Spark Climate)
- Mina Maleki is looking for funding her PhD project at the University of Oxford to rethink biomanufacturing using hydrogen as a feedstock. Proposal is “Applications of hydrogenase enzymes in sustainable chemical synthesis” and you can email Mina.
Job postings
- Deep Science Ventures, a venture creator combining available scientific knowledge is recruiting for several climate biotech roles: (h/t Eirini Malliaraki and Eddy Perello)
- Co-Founder in Residence for soil erosion prevention.
- Engineering Co-Founder in Residence for Biowaste processing for carbon capture.
- Co-founder in Residence for plant biochemistry and biotechnology.
- Scoping Associate for the Agriculture team.
- Strain engineer, Robigo (h/t Andee Wallace at Robigo)
- Many roles in carbon dioxide MRV (measurement verification and reporting) at Isometric following their $25M fundraise (h/t Neil Hacker at Isometric)
- Pilot Plant manager and scientist roles, Tezza
Research & News
Technical Resources
- Part 1 of Roadmap for Biotechnology in Carbon Dioxide Removal: Aqueous Sorbents is now live on Homeworld Research. (full document, executive summary, webinar)
- Hassan Kane and Adil Yusef, founders of Medium Biosciences, created the OpenFoundry. It is an online directory that makes it easy to search for core facilities, academic researchers and industry-affiliated people who can contract research services.
- The endosymbiont of Epithemia clementina is specialized for nitrogen fixation within a photosynthetic eukaryote (h/t Ian Hu at PhycoBloom)
- Continuous synthesis of E. coli genome sections and Mb-scale human DNA assembly (h/t Braden Tierney at Two Frontiers Project)
- Genomic language model predicts protein co-regulation and function (h/t Neiman Matthew at Schmidt Futures)
- RFDiffusion, an AI tool for protein design from the David Baker Lab, is free and open source. (h/t Helen Eisenach at UW sent this tweet)
- Single-cell multimodal imaging uncovers energy conversion pathways in biohybrids
- Upper limit efficiency estimates for electromicrobial production of drop-in jet fuels
- Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and Woods Hole reaction, h/t Dakota Gruener.
- Microbes in Models: Integrating Microbes into Earth System Models for Understanding Climate Change (h/t Shahar Bracha at MIT)
- Genetically edited wood could make paper more sustainable (h/t Niko McCarty)
- A roadmap for the creation of synthetic lichen by Arjun Khakhar
- All I need is one good plasmid – introducing the POSSUM toolkit [for working with non-model organisms] by Cultivarium
Blog posts & podcasts
- What is the bioeconomy? Two articles from our friends at FAS:
- “What’s next for the Bioeconomy? Defining it” by Nazish Jeffery
- Coordinating the U.S. Government Approach to the Bioeconomy by Sarah Carter
- Sarah and Nazish will host a webinar on August 24 titled Shaping our priorities for the Bioeconomy: How definitions matter in a bio-based World
- Big thinking on Open-System Carbon Removal by Dai Ellis and John Sanchez
- The Codon Guide to Synthetic Biology (shoutout Niko McCarty)
- We wanted solarpunk, instead we got monoclonal antibodies by Dan Goodwin
- Decoding Bio 2023 (h/t Elliot Roth at Spira!)
- Methane to Meat from the Business for Good Podcast (h/t Pete Kelly at Align to Innovate)
- Biomimicry, an Operating Manual for Earthlings from the On Being podcast (h/t Paul Reginato)
Inspiration – Motivation through art and beauty
- Paul Reginato’s pair of poems, Sand and Soil, urge us to hold onto our ability to act through love in the face of overwhelming challenge.
- Explore the practice of creativity through the mind of record producer Rick Rubin on the On Being podcast.
- Josh McGinnis shows us the beauty of cultured fungi through timelapse photography (LinkedIn, Video).
Thanks for reading our first newsletter! We appreciate your attention and hope this was useful to you.
We’ll see you again soon, and in the meantime, feel free to reach out to Homeworld Collective anytime. Your input and ideas will make the next newsletter even better.
Best,
The Homeworld Collective Team
hello@homeworld.bio
@HomeworldBio