A co-created newsletter of resources and actions for climate biotech
Hello Climate Biotech Friends!
Happy ending to the beginning of the year 💚 In this issue we have ideation prizes, co-founder opportunities and Magical Climate Buttons.
Homeworld Collective has been hard at work to support our first Garden Grants Cohort for Protein Engineering. The announcement of this inaugural granting program is upcoming, but the TLDR is that we’re thrilled to work with top teams around the world and see this cohort as a focused experiment to bring a problem-first attitude to science. Within a year, we hope to be announcing that all these teams successfully reached their next rounds of funding to support their ambitious efforts.
Our efforts to grow the knowledge base of climate biotech is growing rapidly. We started 2023 with 9 entries in our Problem Statement Repository and see an exciting year ahead of collaboration and scale.
Homeworld Collective is actively seeking a great teammate to join us as a Contract Research Associate to join us in roadmapping frontier problems for biotech’s contribution to greenhouse gas mitigation.
As we start 2024, just a friendly reminder that Homeworld Collective is a 501c3 with the mission to support the growth of climate biotech. That means it is literally our day jobs to help you on your journey, and we love what we do. Feel free to reach out anytime with ideas or questions!
With love and action-oriented optimism,
The Homeworld Team
Jobs, Funding, & Opportunities
Funding ($ looking for projects)
- There is a promotion/challenge for free DNA sequencing. Due Feb 23rd (h/t Shahar Bracha)
- Bezos Earth Fund is offering an ideation prize for Atmospheric GHG removal. Applicants can receive $4k for an initial idea, and $50k follow-up to work on it. Applications are Due Feb1st (h/t Doc Brown)
- Accelerator for carbon removal for any European startup founders, applications due March 1!
- NSF Funding opportunity “Environmental Convergence Opportunities in Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (ECO-CBET)” – preliminary proposal due Sept 17
- Grants for CDR/other climate related things via Horizon Europe: (h/t Ariane Mora)
- CTRF’s 2024 call for proposals applying biotech to greenhouse gas removal is open! Intent to submit due Feb 26, and final proposals due April 26. Projects can be up to 48 months in duration and request up to £800,000 funding. (h/t Madeleine Luck)
- Keeling curve prize offering 50k for solutions to mitigate GHG (h/t Bianca Datta)
Funding Opportunities (projects looking for $)
- UC Davis D2D program to use CA as the workhorse in their nation-wide protein engineering course.
- Opportunity for academics to pause and spend 3 months getting an idea off the ground for a company or new scientific endeavor, with up to $100k in support from 1517 Fund. Apply here by Feb 23.
- Quorum Bio is raising their pre-seed to address the Phosphorus Crisis by gene-editing non-model microbes into fertilizers.” Contact Sudharsan Dwaraknath at sudharsan@quorum-bio.com.
Job postings
- Opportunity to guide the application of biocatalysts for DAC energy reduction through TEA as a postdoc with Mijndert Van der Spek at Heriot-Watt University in the UK. Check out Mijndert’s problem statement for Homeworld Garden Grants to learn more about the problem they are working on!
- The Mining Microbiome Analytics Platform (M-MAP) is looking to hire a CEO (job post here). They’re building a data and analytics platform for microbiome data from mine sites to support the development of microbial tech for mining, remediation and carbon mineralization, starting with a $14M investment from a consortium including mining industry giants Teck Resources and Rio Tinto.
- Sasha Milshteyn is seeking a co-founder for his new company, Transition Biomining, Inc
- Program partner opportunity with BEAM Circular for an org experienced in startup acceleration (RFI here). BEAM is seeking a partner for their Circular Bioeconomy Accelerator program in the Northern Central Valley. (Reach out to Sal Bednarz)
- The team at Systemiq Capital is hiring a new investor (h/t George Darrah)
- ARPA-E is hiring additional Fellows, which serve as their internal think tank and help to develop programs and brainstorm new ideas for the future of energy from (h/t Ben Weiner)
- Two co-founder opportunities with the talented Edward Perello at Deep Science Ventures, for a company “unlocking the latent potential of coastal degraded land, via an approach combining controlled environments, decarbonisation & desalination.” 1) someone experienced with ion exchange membrane systems 2) someone experienced with developing ventures in the water and/or agricultural space.
- Centeon is hiring a Mechanical Engineer to round out their technical team.
- RMI is hiring a Senior Associate for geochemistry in CDR.
- Living Carbon is hiring a Plant Transformation Director (h/t Maddie Hall)
- Opportunity for STEM majors at minority-serving institutions to intern with ARPA-E via their INTEREST program.
- Elysia Creative Biology is an early-stage startup engineering ruminant feed to suppress methanogenesis. They are seeking scientists with expertise in metabolic engineering (plant-specific not required but a plus!) and analytical chemistry (especially with experience in GC of low-concentration samples and/or metabolic flux analysis), and a business development expert from the livestock feed, animal health, or the carbon space.
Research & News
Technical resources
- “Molecular Jackhammers” (X Post)
- Perspective piece by Colin Averill on the need for conservation of microbial communities, including a literature synthesis describing the potential for microbes, particularly fungi, to enhance plant growth
- NyctiDB: A relational database of bioprocesses. Has a good section of resources for existing database CC (h/t Ariane Mora)
- “Generative artificial intelligence GPT4- accelerates knowledge mining and machine learning for synthetic biology” (bioarxiv, h/t George Tong). These authors also created the IMPACT Database, “The Industrial Microbiology Publication and AI Crowd-sourced Toolbox”
- “Microbial Invasions and Inoculants: A Call to Action” (EcoRxiv, h/t Charles Brooke)
- Climate Tech Investment in 2023 showed diverse trends in amidst lower funding and deal activity, including a 30% drop in the market (CTVC by Sightline Climate)
- “Understanding the formation and structure of bio-mineralization for self-healing of marine concrete: An experimental and thermodynamic approach” (Cement and Concrete Composites, h/t Dave Lee)
- Overview of applications of engineered microbes for sustainability from Nature
- Research Directions: Biotechnology Design from Cambridge University Press is open to pitches to publish “Question pieces” (example) in climate biotech. Contact: Monica Moniz at monica.moniz@cambridge.org
Innovations and Developments
- GreenLight Biosciences secures EPA registration for new bioinsecticide for food system safety and sustainability (h/t Arye Lipman)
- “Catalyzing Across Sectors to Advance the Bioeconomy” funded by the NSF to enact the US Executive Order on the Bioeconomy (CASA-Bio, h/t Nazish Jeffery)
- Very interesting article about aerobic methane generation in phytoplankton, with implications for carbon budgets (h/t Derin Fasipe)
- Additional details released by the Biden administration for up to a $3/kg subsidy for clean hydrogen production. (h/t Andrew Stewart)
- Explanation on X of the LATTICE Lablink tool. Open sourced so folks can run with it on their own! (h/t Mark Hansen)
Climate Impact Studies
- Cascade Climate’s blog post discussing their strategy and their first two main efforts: an industry-wide quantification standard that is used to ensure low likelihood of over-estimating tons of CO2 removed, and a public data system that allows assessment and knowledge development by the broader community. (h/t Dai Ellis, John Sanchez, Jenny Mills)
- Big CDR report (gDrive link, 225mb) just dropped from Lawrence Livermore Labs. Some very polished graphics for the CDR lovers in our community. (h/t Svenja Telle and her Linkedin post)
- Research roadmap for microbial methane mitigation, by the American Society for Microbiology.
- “Fixing forest carbon credits” (Science, h/t Doc Brown)
Blog posts
- Great self-analysis and sharing of learnings from Benjamin Reinhardt and his first year of SpecTech
Inspiration – Motivation through art and beauty
- Visualization of all life on earth – incredible graphic showing the difference of scale across our planet’s biomass.
- Flipping the script: Unlocking Climate Hopeful Climate Stories by Jen Johnson. Key point here is increasing access of research data to journalists for optimistic climate coverage.
We believe in the power of our community, and our newsletter aims to showcase this. So many people are doing amazing work towards climate, sustainability, and planetary health. Thank you to everyone who submitted the ideas and inspirations which created this issue.
If you have any feedback, insight, or just want to say hello, please connect with us!
hello@homeworld.bio
@HomeworldBio