Project Grant 2214021

This two-year, $211,846 project grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Materials Research supports research into programmable living materials through synthetic biofilm engineering and quantitative computational modeling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The researchers will develop bioengineering tools to control bacterial cell deposition and assembly into "material blocks" with distinct interfaces. They will also establish modeling approaches to predict conditions for patterned material generation. The funding enables work with local educators to implement simpler bacterial material fabrication and patterning in underrepresented minority schools. The students will make and pattern simple bacterial materials and model system dynamics using a web applet. This award advances the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program to strengthen the nation's scientific enterprise through increasing scientific knowledge and understanding of major problems.