A co-created newsletter of resources and actions for climate biotech
Hello Climate Biotech Friends!
It’s been a busy Earth Month, and we’ve got some exciting updates for you:
- Check out our newly launched Climate Biotech Jobs Board! This free, user-friendly resource is designed by and for the climate biotech community. A huge thanks to those of you who shared input and expressed interest so far! Explore the jobs board for yourself, or learn more via our latest blog post.
- Join us for a virtual event: Work in Climate Biotech (Tue 4/30) — Homeworld is partnering with Work on Climate to help people enter the field.
- Our inaugural Garden Grants program cohort continues strong. In case you missed it, we’re supporting 16 teams embarking on “big, if true” projects harnessing biotechnology for sustainability challenges. Read our blog post announcing the winners or dive into our feature length piece describing what we learned from this process.
And finally, we want to continue making this newsletter with you and your needs as a member of the climate biotech community in mind — would you please fill out this 4-question survey to help us out?
With love and action-oriented optimism,
The Homeworld Team
Jobs, Funding, & Opportunities
Funding ($ looking for projects)
- Schmidt Sciences Virtual Institute for Earth’s Water is accepting applications for new projects
- SustainableVentures is accepting applications from climate tech startups (h/t Alexander James Phillips)
- The Astera Institute is seeking ideas for innovations that might help synthetic biology scale (h/t Kristin Ellis)
- NSF Ideas Lab for cell-free systems — up to $40M USD over 3 years
- NSF opportunity for Advancements in AI for Science (h/t Jesse Lou)
- The Good Food Institute is seeking proposals for alternative proteins and bioprocessing projects — up to $250K USD over 2 years (h/t Milena Ivanisevic)
- Bezos Earth Fund announces $100M for AI solutions to climate change and nature loss (h/t George Tong)
- MACRO: Mixed Algae Conversion Research Opportunity from the Bioenergy Technologies Office and the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management of the U.S. Department of Energy (h/t Hanny Rivera)
Opportunities
- Thinking about marine carbon dioxide removal? Help the Ocean Visions team understand your biggest challenges to help direct community efforts where they’re most needed!
- Working at the intersection of biotech and CDR and want to get published? Submit your manuscript to the Frontiers in Climate special issue here by 4/30.
- Scialog meeting for early career scientists in sustainable minerals, metals, and materials
- ARPA-E request for information on needs for responsible mining of critical materials
Job postings
- Microbiology Research Associate, Pioneer Labs (San Francisco, CA, United States)
- Synthetic Biologist, Polyose Bio (Boston, MA, United States)
- Global Program Manager, Benchling (Boston, MA, United States)
- Grant Writer, Liquid Trees (Noida, UP, India)
- Check out our newly launched Climate Biotech Jobs Board for even more job postings!
Research & News
Technical resources
- Bioprocess equipment explorer (a database of costs, energy use, and other parameters for different scales of fermentors, centrifuges, homogenizers and other equipment and some other open access resource)
- In Emeryville: giveaway of laboratory accessories and consumables, 5/6–5/10
Innovations and Developments
- Scientists documented the first-ever “nitroplast” — a nitrogen-fixing organelle — in a marine alga
- Nebraska could become a hub for the growing bio-manufacturing industry
- Cyanobacteria produce H2 in the presence of methane and under other conditions (h/t Derin Fasipe)
- Biden administration sets first-ever limits on “forever chemicals” in drinking water
- Bottled water might contain even more tiny plastics than once thought
- There’s a metabolic enzyme that assembles into fractal geometries
- Challenges and opportunities in bringing agricultural biotech to market (h/t Vivian Zhong)
- Agronomic benefits of enhanced rock weathering using basalt (h/t Ariana Caiati)
- Scar-free knock-ins in plants (h/t Sean Sullivan)
- Removing CO2 via microbially-enhanced silicate weathering in agricultural soils (h/t Phil Grayeski)
- Modeling kinetics of biodegradation of emerging contaminants of concern (h/t Derin Fasipe)
- The physical origin of rate promoting vibrations in enzymes revealed by structural rigidity (h/t Derin Fasipe)
Climate Impact Studies
- Right now, biomanufacturing isn’t cleaning up chemicals — how can we change this? (h/t Alex Rosay)
- How climate change might impact the economy (h/t Monica Cesinger)
- Landfills emit methane at levels even higher than we once thought
Blog Posts
- Ideas Matter Fellow Devon Stork just wrote a bold essay “Why Nothing Can Grow on Mars.”
- Ideas Matter Fellow Kat Baney published a fascinating think piece “The Wizardry and Prophecy of DNA Printing.”
Upcoming Events
- Biomass and environmental sustainability in the bioeconomy // 5/1, 10am ET, Virtual (h/t Nazish Jeffery)
- European Congress on Biotechnology // 6/30–7/3, Rotterdam
- Gordon Research Conference on Biomineralization // 8/4–8/9, New London, New Hampshire
- Geochemistry conference with a focus on ERW // 8/18–8/23, Remote + Chicago
Inspiration – Motivation through art and beauty
- Millions of gamers advance biomedical research (h/t Jason B. Thomas)
- The Gameful Scientist, a newsletter exploring the intersection of biology and gaming by Ashton Trotman-Grant
- Mainstream media is starting to embrace the importance of climate optimism. (As it should, as shared in this report on positive climate coverage from our friend Jen Johnson.)
- Our new Marketing Specialist, Arya Natarajan, loves snails (and most things without backbones) with all her heart — when she’s not working with Homeworld, she writes and illustrates Filter Feeder, a newsletter about connecting with your local nature and community.
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
By The Homeworld Team