[0:00] what are engineered living materialsHello. The guest today is Meredith Silverstein. She's a professor at Cornell in the engineering school. She runs a Research Institute at Cornell. So hi, Meredith. What does your Research Institute do? Hi, Tony. So I founded the Engineered Living Materials Research Institute here at Cornell, and we are all about reimagining the future of materials and their manufacturing. And specifically, we're really interested in harnessing advances in biotechnology and applying them to change all of the materials that our world is made of. So what makes the biotechnology so powerful as a material? Yeah, it's, it's really about addressing the weaknesses in our in our current material society in terms of what kind of functionality can offer. So there are some things that biology is amazing at, like sensing and responding to the environment in a way that's much more selective than any of our synthetic materials or traditional materials can do. Phenomenal at sort of growth or and not just something getting bigger in biology, but really doing it in such an amazingly controlled way where you have a hierarchical structure that can be optimized for say structural properties like stiffness and strength, like we might want in a building, but also for thermal control for redistributing resources around out of materials. Biology has really amazing ability to like grow a structure into really intricate levels. And then not just it like can grow it, but once you have that structure, biological components can like continually remodel or sort of like eat, eat away and then regrow the material as you go. So you don't just like have a static structure, you something that's always adapting to the needs. And living organisms are pretty good at like harnessing different types of energy. So instead of burning fossil fuels, plants use solar energy or like we eat food and convert that into like our ability to function. So biology is really has amazing, amazing functionality that we can tap into from a materials perspective. Gotcha, that makes sense. So so from like the like from a day-to-day life, like this morning I woke up, I took the subway, I took the bus, I met a cornelian. Like how does like the day-to-day materials? Like what's example day-to-day material that would be better with biology? So let's see, you woke up and I'm assuming this involved maybe like brushing your teeth and putting on some clothing and you got into a subway and that subway was probably mostly made of metals. And then you went Meta Cornelli and I don't know, maybe you maybe you had some coffee with a disposable cup of some sort. So if we think just about the materials that you interacted with and I guess you also woke up in a house, so or an apartment. So something like was keeping you warm and safe and protected a probably through all of those steps. And then also some materials were helping you in transit and then probably helping you consume something. So maybe we could take take those one at a time. We think about that original environment that you were staying in last night. Like we spend something like 90% of our time indoors in modern society. And we built a lot of materials to keep us comfortable and warm and protected from, from wind and other, other hazards. But there's also like I would say we've gotten used to those materials and we consider those like modern and great right now can we do we are better And like when we lived in caves, we could do do better. So like some of those materials in the room that you're staying, we're probably off gassing like formaldehyde or other toxins. So one major challenge with current materials is their contribution to indoor air pollution. So like one thing we could do with living materials is, well, we could have materials that you're using that produce those fabrics or those carpets and don't have F gassing. But even we can take your existing environment and we could provide coatings that actually take away those hazardous components. So we could like coat your walls in something that breaks down all of the toxins in your environment. We could also do like fun things like have your blanket change colors or have the clothing you put on change colors or adapt to your body temperature to like have better ventilation. And then as you took the subway, like probably you've noticed that infrastructure constantly needs repair and that's a sort of a continuous battle, I think in modern society. And so we could have living materials that instead of things having to be actively repaired, they're always passively being repaired. Like they're sensing like, oh, there's damage that I need to fix that. Or you just have something that's continuously rebuilding itself. So instead of fighting to constantly maintain our infrastructure, we could have a self maintaining infrastructure. And then for your plastic cup, you could imagine like a really nice or your coffee cup, like a really nice biodegradable solution. So you could have bacteria make that material for you and then you could feed it to the bacteria at the end and reprocess it back to raw materials. So we're talking about very different scales of things, sort of like modifying where you're living to be a little bit nicer and a little bit healthier, to really rethink your infrastructure to completely to like having better disposable products. Nice. Yeah, Everything from infrastructure level to the tiny little cup level. Exactly. We're excited about all of those because that's like what our world is made of. So I'm trying to picture this now. So I wake up, there's carpet on the ground. It's like a dead carpet. So it's like a plasticky thing. I think it was a carpet like what does a living probably. Made of some sort of plastic. Yeah. Well, what does like a living carpet look like? Is it green? And does there like like a like a little tree thing growing out of it? Like what does a living carpet look like? I don't think we know yet. I have. I have my thoughts on what that carpet looks like. So I would love to have like a Moss floor. But I think there's lots of questions about whether that's practical. And there's also questions about whether people are like, that would make people comfortable, right? So we're talking about quality of living changes. I think the human perception part is super important. And one thing we're really excited about it at only we love the science, we love the basic science, we love the technology. We're also interested in how people will interact with our technologies and so understanding like who the users will be and like how they're going to feel about all living material is actually a really important part of what we're doing. Yeah, there's one that's like too big of a change that they might not be as receptive. Right, unless it's like a big really trendy change that everybody falls in love with, like some products that have been in the past, right, have been drastic changes that are readily accepted and others, you know, not so much. So we we think that the human part of this is really important because ultimately we're talking about making the lives of humans better. But that makes sense. I think there's I think a Moss. Personally I think a boss floor would be fun, but it would take a lot of user testing first. Gotcha. Gotcha. That makes sense. I think so, as you. Yeah. Just to take your example and go a little bit less drastic, you could think about having that same carpet that's made it is today, but coating it in something that you don't really see or feel but that makes it healthier for you. So it doesn't release like bad chemicals into the air. Exactly that. Like sort of eats those chemicals as they come off. Gotcha, gotcha. So it's like something that's sort of invisible, so the humans don't really have to adapt to it, but it automatically makes the environment better. I think that's a like a strategic choice, right, that you could say one could make, yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. So there's like the existing world and there's like the new world that you envisioned more biology around. How do you like, come up with these, like, creative ideas? How do you come up with like, creativity? Yeah, that's a great question.

[7:39] culture of scientific creativitySo honestly, like a lot of us on our LB team are avid sci-fi readers. So we love we love reading and thinking about the future and that's sort of who we attract. Those are the people who want to work on L me on creating totally new materials. And one thing we work really hard on is creating a community of like open minded thinkers where all ideas are welcome. And then we sort of work from sort of the crazy brainstorming through like, OK, what what about this is like really exciting? What's practical? What can we bring to it? And so we have lots of different styles of brainstorming meetings from sort of small groups of sort of two to four people to large groups of all of our, our grad students And people will present their own research. People will present just totally new ideas. People will present like basic science around the topic. And our, really our guiding philosophy is just being super open minded, but also critical science thinkers at the same time. So it's a, it's an all ideas are welcome. Like, and we'll brainstorm like, what do we want the future to be in 50 years? What do we want space travel to look like? But we'll also say, like, how can we make this room better? It's so thinking about different time scales. And actually a really phenomenal Cornell alum from plant sciences has been helping us a bit with that. Giovanna, who's working on bio design, like formal methods for bio design. And she came and helped us run a workshop last fall, actually. And that was really interesting. And one thing, one thing we did was AI image generation to help build our our pictures of the future. Interesting. So, so you have the within your research group, your faculty and PhD students and also like outside, like the alumni would come back too to help. Yeah, we love connecting with alumni who are excited about this topic. And so. Gotcha. Yeah, we definitely reach out to outside people as well. And Jeevana is amazing cuz she's on the topic. And according to alum who started in plant sciences and then and now mostly in architecture, I mean in bio design. And so that's like really representative of who we are as well. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, like so within this open minded and critical science thinking culture, how do you set up organization? Yeah. So I think actually the key to it is how we formed. Of course we need to maintain culture, but so the way that we formed our team was actually starting at the faculty level and you can get the idea of this topic of engineered living materials spans of course materials and mechanical engineering and then lots of biological engineering and biological science. And so Cordell is an amazing place to form a team like that. And I basically formed it like word of mouth, one person at a time. So I met with a couple of department heads who I knew were well positioned to understand the potential people in this field. And they sent me to someone, and that person sent me to someone else. And so basically, if you send an e-mail, like, do you want to work on this really cool futuristic idea? People who say, yes, US are like, I think inherently very open minded people.

[10:37] interdisciplinary collaboration at CornellSo we built the team with science expertise in mind, but also with enthusiasm and open mindedness in mind. And then so we started really with a set of about 10 faculty doing a bunch of brainstorming meetings from like, OK, engineered living materials to how do we use biotechnology to enable the future of materials and what does that really mean? And those faculty come from across plant sciences and microbiology, biomedical engineering and chemical engineering and architecture and Arts and Sciences. They're from across campus. And so it's just a really fun community. And then those people tend to, of course, recruit students that are also fun and enthusiastic. And the students that are interested in the interdisciplinary work and the postdocs are the ones that join in terms of actual projects, like a funding is a huge, a huge piece of this. So we try to get funding for projects. So like one really fun Internet plan project that we have is funded by the Office of Naval Research. And what we're doing is working on making a hybrid living coating. So part part living, part non living coatings that can detect the onset of structural damage. So as a ship for instance, undergoes fatigue, we have a coating that can like detect that damage is starting to happen. And then we actually just put out a first paper on that and we have a patent overview. And then what we're doing next is actually trying to mitigate that damage. So how could you use the living component to actually stop the propagation of that crack? And that project is among four of us faculty. And so somebody with really materials, like mechanics of materials expertise, like a computationalist, someone who's leading the synthetic biology, my group that's bringing together the materials and the biology, and then my students also Co advised by someone who's a biomedical engineer. So it's actually 4 faculty, 3 students, three graduate students, some undergrads. And like, it's a super fun, like, I don't know, interdisciplinary group bringing together that that project. And then those students also participate in our L me like workshops and brainstorming sessions and all of that. So that's just one example. We have lots of those projects going on where it's a faculty together working on like an idea that we've come up with together in the context of the space. Yeah. Like, how did you hear about that, the funding? The one's a profess. One of the four professors hear about it and told the rest and thought that was a good fit for L me. So in general, I would say like we look for funding calls for each other and then send them around to try to find good opportunities. In this particular one, we came up with this idea. We actually came up with a few ideas and we talked to a program officer about them, somebody who works in like structures for the Navy, materials and structures for the Navy. And the living materials part was was new for that program, but we got her excited about like the potential, right? Like, it's not like we're using biotechnology, but the vision's not about biotechnology, it's about making materials better. It's about solving this materials always fail sort of problem is one example. So that's what this project is about. So the biotechnology helps it happen, but like the goal really is better functioning materials. Like, let's make our lives better. Super. So as you grow this Research Institute over time, how do you think about the funding structure for it? Do you think of like a couple of long term grants and a couple of small short term grants and a couple industry grants? Like, how do you think of the institute's funding? Yeah, I think to, I think we're always going to have a bunch of grants that are sort of what I described. But I think long term what we really need to be able to like chase after those really exciting longer term ideas is, is something more. So I think that could be like an industrial consortium that's a model that we're exploring or I think that could be a large grant from a foundation or I think that could be something supported by Cornell or Cornell, Cornell alumni. What we really, we really need like sort of a a stability to be able to keep pursuing this like really exciting work because it is so interdisciplinary. Like we can we can keep things going like they are, but I think to be able to take the really big risks, we want to be able to take long term. I think like some yeah, long term support for post op fellows and graduate student fellowships and also undergrads to be able to work and like take on a cool projects is is really important. Yeah. One, one thing that's fun about this is we get lots of really cool undergrads that are interested as well. So I just, we just hired another L me undergrad last week, is gonna take on a new project that we're excited about. Yeah. Super so undergrads can do research for L me too. Definitely. We have really cool undergrad projects. Obviously they're so much fun. And because our undergrads are, a lot of them are naturally interdisciplinary. So this person that I was just talking to, you know, is in in bioengineering, but has taken like a bunch of focus classes and a bunch of material science classes. And he's like a wonderful mix. But it's just an example like we have, yeah, amazing students that are like attracted to the interdisciplinary part. I think really at every every level of seniority, which is. Super fun. And this idea of like building up like a endowment style because like some of the ideas might be so ambitious that there might not be a grant for it initially. But then if you build up into it, be able to get a grant for it. What, what? How do you think of the ambition? How reachable funding is? Yeah. I think the endowment idea, whether it's endowment or more like an industrial consortium sort of approach, is that it gives you that ability to do the early ground development work on new ideas. So bioengineering I think is especially slow compared to other types of science I've done because things need to to grow. And some of that is very slow. And also other aspects I've come to appreciate as a mechanical engineer who typically has worked on synthetic materials. I'm getting used to the time scale. But I think for any science, like if you want to go after really exciting ideas, you need to be able to like do the early stage development. And I think a lot of us individually can do that within our own group by like, I don't know, careful, careful strategies and using existing grants to to sort of fund the next. But if you want to do something that's across all these different labs, like you really need to be able to like support someone for a year or two on or support really a couple people for a year or two on each idea before you get sort of the results to be like, OK, yes, like now we are really competitive for. Yeah. This larger grant, right? There's there's always grants, but to be competitive for them it often helps if you already have results like showing how exciting your ideas. Yeah. So, so I'm like for like a specific example, like if there's a carpet and then you add a biological layer on top of the carpet to prevent the bad chemicals from releasing, what are examples of groundwork that goes into it and what are examples of parts of it that would be funded by grants? The papers part and also like

[17:25] how to think up new projectsthe grant timing part really depends on what agency is funding you and also a little bit on luck and perhaps more than luck also networking to figure out what the right opportunities are but sometimes luck in timing. So let's say we take the carpet coding, which I've never thought about before right now so please bear with me. So the first thing you need to do is think like what's how is this doable, right? Like, and also you want to ask like is a biological approach even makes sense for this, right? So we're working mostly on biological approaches to solving problems, but many of us has other expertise as well. But let's say you think you're, you're like, OK, will biology be a good approach for this? You want to ask like, what kind of biology could do this? Like what's going to process a toxin and break it down? That would be one piece of it, right? And that's something that you could take something that's naturally occurring or you could think about engineering orgasm to make it happen. You also have to think like about the life scale of that product. So let's say carpet off gases for a month or two. So maybe you only need a product that lives for a month or two and then decays, stops functioning, but stops functioning in an okay way that's still healthy for humans, right? So you wanna ask, how does my Organism approach, my biological approach, meet the lifespan of my product need, Right. And then you also have to ask the sort of human interaction part, like the aesthetics. And then you have to address the sort of the LC, the ethics sort of social aspect, right, like and legal regulation aspect. And I said and then and then and then, but really you'd want to do all of these together so that you're developing like use driven technology that will actually be useful. And then if you're going to do this with PhD students, you need to make sure there's interesting science questions there as well, right? Because we're part of being at Cornell is developing good researchers, developing good students, right? It's like a training, training humans, not just producing technologies or science. So you need to make sure there's like interesting basic science questions on there. Or maybe like you have a master of engineering student develop a technology if it's really that straightforward. So we would take that and say like, OK, I think, you know, a bacteria would be a great way to do this. And that bacteria, I should probably take something that's safe, like it's called biosafety level 1 and that's not regulated. And ideally, if we could do it without having to engineer it, that would be great. So maybe I would do a combination of like a bacteria and synthetic material to like help keep the bacteria alive or something like that. I'm just spitballing here. But and then you would want to, if you want to go get funding for that, you would probably need to make a story that's about larger than just addressing carpets, but like how you're going to improve air quality in the built environment. And so you could imagine that being about human health, right? Like that could be a human health argument. And there are some programs within not right, National Institute of Health, NIH that actually thinks about how materials influence health. So that would be like one approach or you could get some preliminary. And for that, you would definitely need preliminary data showing that your approach it could be effective. And then you could also think like. About maybe you said this to a foundation that is concerned about like living environments for communities that are at risk, right. And so that would be like another approach. So it's very customized to like, I don't know, every, every single case is is different. That's another reason that like if you just have somebody to pay students to pursue ideas that are like sort of the highest impact, that can really help because it can let you try out lots of ideas and then like push on the ones that are really exciting and are not just like slightly modifying our existing world. But like, you know, like how do we do space travel and have habitats long term, right? Like that's a one an example with really fun science questions that has lots of longer term ambition. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. This is so like between different projects that your institute pursues. Is there any like like is there like for the carpet? For one, the the Organism that's used for the carpet, is that the same Organism that would be used to make the cup as well? Like what's the similarities between the different or is it just like the way approach of thinking about biology that's the shared?

[21:38] commonality between projectsI would say our main commonality among our projects is more approach that it is Organism. So we have two main, I'd say intellectual themes within this goal of making materials better. So one is sense, compute and respond. Here's a fun example from Rob Shepherd's group was he had his his former postdoc who was one of our ELMI postdocs, Anon Mishra used fungus as a sensor for UV light and then basically on and figured how how to tap into the electrical signaling of the fungus and then used it as a brain to guide a soft robot. So I was able to to decide to move away, away from or towards light, right. That's an example of a sense compute respond project. We have lots of really cool fungus sense could be responds. We're also working on biochemical communication more generally. And then our other one is mechanics and morphogenesis across scales. So like how does something get its size and shape and stiffness and strength? Like how do you grow something to be the structure that you need it to be and potentially like the host of other organisms? And so we use a lot of different organisms, but they're sort of within the kingdoms of plants, fungi and bacteria. And that has to do with what we think is useful for like outside in the world, but also like what Cordell has expertise in, right? Cordell has a phenomenal AG department. We have like a huge fungus collection. We have really amazing synthetic biologists in both of those spaces. And then also in in the bacteria space, there's bacteria engineering expertise really across campus. That's phenomenal. Gotcha. Yeah. Interesting. So these are the two approaches where you find a lot like similar projects that all fall into those two approaches. Yeah. I think those two approaches are both they're things we're like really excited about using biology for and they're also what we think we're well positioned to take on. Gotcha. Yeah. So since compute respond and the other one was the mechanisms of growth. Mechanics and morphogenesis like mechanics like stiffness and strength and morphogenesis like how does something get to its size and shape? Like how does a leaf know to stop at a particular dimension? Or how interesting like like flowers blooming are always so reliable. But of course, thinking about applying that to an engineering context. So earlier the example of the carpet that would be a sense computer respond one because it was since there was chemicals and it would respond by removing chemicals and the infrastructure one like the subway cars that would be a mechanics one or the morphogenesis 1. That's an interesting. It actually ends up at the intersection of the two and I think that's true for a lot of our projects. So if you were just interested in like growing the subway car, which is thought if you're interested in growing a structure, probably not a subway car, but interested in growing a structure, growing a brick for a building or even growing the building. Or like we've we had a fun project of growing mycelium to make like like shootable walls kind of in the style of concrete. Like that growth process is a mechanic symorphogenesis project. But let's say, like in my, my, I think our collective vision for the future of these buildings, it's not just that they're growing into the right properties. It's like they sense that like wind conditions are becoming more hazardous, like high winds becoming really common because of like changes in the environment. And then they actually get stronger over time as a result or yeah, I don't know. Or like UV light is becoming more intense and they evolve to actually block out more UV light, for example. That would be more like a window applications, not just like the future version of like built in the built environment is not just mechanics and morphogenesis, it's actually mechanics and morphogenesis combined with sense compute respond. When we think about their development in sort of these two bins, I think it's easier for us to work through. Gotcha, gotcha. Interesting. So it's like it grows into like the house that you want to live in that adapts to the environment. Exactly. Interesting gotcha. It's like an adaptive infrastructure, not just a self self growing. Yeah, but that's that's definitely the the longer time scale ideas. Is it adapting that like the house that survives the high winds will have more baby baby houses that would adapt to strong winds as well? Like like how does it? That'd be really cool. That wasn't what I was thinking, but I actually really like that idea, Tony. Yeah. Wait, so so how does the house get stronger over time? Is it because it reproduces more or is it because it it's what's the surviving?

[26:08] how biology builds a new houseYeah. So I think, I think the, I don't know how. I think that's one of our big, big questions or I'll take it, step it back a little bit. Like one of our big questions is how do you get a group of living cells to work together towards a goal that you're setting, right, like a function, a material function like strength or a goal that you're setting? And how do you get them to continue to work through that over time? And I think the answer to that depends on exactly how you're trying to achieve it. And I also think there's lots of unknowns here still, but that's the the ultimate goal. Like an example. So you talked about sort of like you talked about evolution just now. I think to some extent, right, Like the house that survives makes new new houses. I do think you could think about taking your good house and like using it as a starter for the next house. So I do think that's actually not a like that's a pretty fun idea. But on the on the, if we step that idea down within, in that house, you can have living components and those, even though you're not making new houses, right? Within that house, there is new things that are being grown. So there's like a bacteria, right, that makes the next generation of bacteria that makes the next generation of bacteria. So you need to use one way to do this would be like a directed evolution approach where you're somehow making an incentive for each set of bacteria to be better at the goal that you care about. So you need to then have like a reward system. So the bacteria are like incentivize, The ones that are better at making your house stronger or more UV resistant are like more incentivized to live. Gotcha. So you have like a little watering candle and this part of the house does a good job in water and more and it gets more bigger overtime. Actually, that touches upon another interesting question that we often discuss within our LD community, and I say the Elm community more generally, which is like, what's the role of human interaction? So do we want to have technologies where you just like the human doesn't really see them or know about them or, or interact with them at all? Or do you want to have technologies where the human is part of the process? And there's lots of examples of both ways of living right now. Like we water our plants and we don't think that's weird. We take care of pets. We do maintenance on our house, like we repaint the outside of our houses. Like there's lots of sort of human interaction examples now and there's other things which we like, like just expect to function. And so I think Elm technologies will end up like that as well. But it could be like the human says, like, yes, this house part is doing well, I'm gonna give it nutrients. Or it could be it's all automated and really built into this sort of sense compute respond part of the material. Yeah. This is so interesting. I feel like picture like a coral reef, for example, a coral reef, great examples that live in the coral reef and it's like they all live together and it's all like all function by itself. It's like very. Is that like possible for everything? Like for humans as well? I don't know if it's possible for everything, but there's lots of really interesting examples in biology about how groups of organisms work together. Like one thing I've been reading some literature about is like on a robustness of ecology. So there is a sort of a, it's almost rated like a financial theory, but there's like a survival like theory within ecology that has to do with sort of the right level of diversity of organisms. OK. Whereas like as external environmental aspects change, like a community can continue to survive and thrive, like if they have the right level of diversity to give them like a robust response. And so that's what approach is thinking about sets of organisms and how they work together under different conditions. Another that's sort of their way would be to really think about like I have a single Organism and I'm really controlling the inputs to it. Maybe not a single cell, but a single like nominally identical organisms. And I'm really controlling the inputs and maybe I'm using synthetic materials to help control them. And then that's how I'm controlling behavior. So I think there's really a lot of a lot of answers and probably the best answer or the best technological solution is going to really depend on the specific case. And that's part of, I think the power of like coming at these problems from such an interdisciplinary team is that we're not like locking ourselves into like my favorite material is polycarbonate, which it is like I'm going to solve all problems with polycarbonate, right? It's letting you like look at the problem holistically, look at the driver and then also look at the science challenges and take on those holistically so they can feedback between different projects. Gotcha. So you're thinking mostly on the material side, how materials like, it's not like you're built like a big kangaroo where everybody could just live inside the pouch of the kangaroo. Yeah, and definitely on the material side. And not just I, I'm specifically very much on the material side. Like that's my expertise. It's what I've been doing from undergrad. But the, I would say the team as a whole is also thinking about material solutions. And yeah, we're definitely not going to build a kangaroo, although a kangaroo pouch does sound oddly comfortable. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So you're more like a lot of different biologies interacting with each other, not like 1 ultra big biology to live. Exactly, yes. One thing that's happened a little bit in the synthetic material world that I think is a key idea for us as well is that this sort of line between material and device is is really starting to blur. And there's actually really interesting work also going on, on sort of like the biological computing end. And so I I think when I say materials, I almost mean everything but. OK. Also, right, like materials that are doing different functions and it's not just that they're sitting there like existing, maybe just structural, they're they're doing thermal, they're doing computing, they're doing like we talked about sense and respond. So it's really like it's active materials as well, right? And that I think that's a trend in materials in general because we like want to be able to do more. Yeah, that makes sense. So, so, so Cornell, one of the big goals is radical collaboration, radical collaboration between all the different groups. What are examples of like? How does like the big bureaucratic system helps you do radical collaboration?

[31:57] how Cornell encourages collaborationSo I think I, I explained how we formed, which was pretty grassroots faculty to faculty. I think it's pretty amazing that we're at a place where you can form something faculty to faculty and that people are actually have sort of the, the bandwidth and the openness and the comfort with their job to be able to do that. But also we have gotten some really nice internal support. So we started with some seed money from the College of Engineering and that let us hire a few L me postdocs that were collaboratively among us and that then led to papers and funding and all those other things that you asked me about before. And they also formed a cornerstone of our community in the first few years and helped organize some of our like networking events and brainstorming events. And we've also benefited from some internal seed grants. So that's another thing. Cornell has a lot of different seed grants. So we have some from the College of Engineering, some from COWS, some from Atkinson Center, and then COWS is also so helped us with some grant writing support, which was really great. And then we're also, since we brought up radical collaborations, definitely benefiting from a design tech, which is the new, you know, cross cross college school that Jenny Sabin is heading. Jenny Sabin is one of our founding members. And we've really found a lot of residents between the goals of design tech and the goals of LV, like there's a lot of really good overlap there. And so that's that's been really nice as well. Gotcha. Yeah, interesting. So by by being part of many different colleges, you're able to tap into see grants of many other colleges too. So there's like a lot of. So yeah, learning a lot as well about how different cool things at Cordell. Interesting. Is there anything like where faculty comes together more often so as a result you're able to hear about other people's work more often because there are any like on the communication side as well? In terms of. Hearing about other people's research in different colleges. Yeah. So I think within like within Elmi, the we spent probably the first two years rotating through faculty presents, faculty presenting. Their. What they were most excited about, like so every meeting would at the in the beginning after the brainstorming phase was a faculty member presenting about their research, other faculty. And like, I mean, we would regularly have like head faculty members there, which is pretty from across three colleges, which is pretty insane for a, just from scheduling perspective. And so I, I that continues like people present on different topics that they care about. And sometimes you're disputed sometimes from the faculty, but we definitely learned a lot from that regards. We also do lots of smaller brainstorming around a topic. So if there's an opportunity that's come up, we will like brainstorm around that. And so certainly I've learned a lot about what our other faculty do and within LB And then also I think other people have started to like really understand each other's expertise. And so that means like when something comes in or someone sees something like, oh, like you could be well suited for this. So like we could put a team together on this. And then the other benefit is like, obviously there is like a ton of seminars at Cornell and different organizations. And so we share that all we have a Slack channel. I mean, so if someone is giving a seminar in, in plant sciences that's relevant to LB, like they'll send it around or a seminar in chemical and biomolecular refineering, like they'll send that around. So like I've learned a lot from going to different talks and I love looking around and seeing other LB people have also ended up at those talks because we're, we're notifying. So that's another other opportunities we like do a lot of information sharing. Yeah, it's like big information hub within Cornell. Yeah. How about like outside of Cornell, Like how how many people outside of Cornell have heard of L me? Like how do you build the Reputations Institute outside of Cornell?

[35:26] build up the reputation of instituteI've been giving a lot of talks lately and actually I think a lot of people do know about L me now, which is kind of really cool because of course when we started, we didn't have any like three, 3 1/2 years ago, we had very little work in the area like. And now we, we actually do, we're putting publishing like like a fair amount of papers now. And I think really cool papers, but also like we participate in the broader Elm community. And so let's see, one fun thing we did was actually this was with the College of Engineering support is we sent, I think five of our PhD in postdocs to there is an Elm workshop at Rice this year. So that's like AUS based workshop. And then they like also had lots of industry people. And so we sent students to that. Students had postdocs to that. And I think that was really good exposure for them. One way I say, I'm pretty sure people know about me since I went to this like not me, like me representing LB. They actually don't know me, which is also funny. But like I went to this workshop in Europe last two falls ago and I hadn't been invited, but I was like, I just I got to go to this like Elm workshop because it's like the workshop that happens every two years where everybody in the community was going at the time. And I was like there and I was sitting talking to someone at at dinner and he's like an architect in England and he's like, Oh, why are you here? And I'm like explaining he's like you created LB like he's like, that's like when I tried to model my interdisciplinary institute around. Like that's so cool. That's very cool. And yeah, I just got an invite to do like an Elma spring, like spring school, like a workshop in Germany in the spring. So I think like we're net, we're networking and like we're networking because we, I guess that's an important part of getting funding, but also because it's an important part of like sharing ideas and understanding, like what are the challenges of the community? And also there's so much space here. And so like trying to go after problems that other people are like not honestly focusing on unless they are, then we try to collaborate and like go after them together. So I think this is like a really new exciting field. And I love new emerging fields because there's so much space and there's like a lot of cooperation actually in the field more broadly. Like one of our faculty, Jing Jiyo has like a, he's an NSF grant that's with faculty across I think four other institutions. So that's been, I think really interesting. They're actually working on the infrastructure problem with the the living buildings. Yeah. Yeah. So, so how do you like, when you're building like an institute, how do you set it up for like success for like the next like 50, a hundred years? Like, is there like a like a platform that you build up over time like you have access to? All the I was hoping you would. Tell the OR. Oh, I don't know either. Yeah, I. Think I, I hope that in, well, not, I hope we'll be in here in 50 years probably, but I hope that this lasts that long. The way that we're trying to achieve that is I think really starting with starting from the people I think is super important, creating the right community, because you need a community of people that could take all the sides, but also are like really excited to work together. And then we're focusing on getting out research, so getting, getting papers, getting our people to be successful. And then we're focusing on the, on the funding piece. I think I say it in that order because like, if you have funding, but you don't have the people doing really exciting stuff, like what's the point? Yeah, right. And. So I think. Yeah, people, science and technology education, I haven't really mentioned today, was actually a huge part of what we do. I mean, this is a new field. So creating, creating communication across fields is really important. And getting our faculty educated and our students educated, I think, yeah, in this area is like really important. And that also creates like the workforce to then go actually make Elm technology real. It creates people to do our startups to join companies. That's kind of the third piece there. And then then the funding is super important. So I'm trying to get better at communicating the exciting things we're doing so that I can get other people to understand like how much like like this is, this is the future. Like, you know, ages have been like named after materials for a long time. And I think our last age is like an information age. But really that's like semiconductors. And you know, our next, our next phase is biotechnology. And the short term of that is a lot of the BioMed that we see really cool AG technology. There's really nice biomanufacturing happening. And we're, we're interested in the biomanufacturing materials, but like really for that next level of functionality, like we need living components in our materials. Like that's that's how we get to like healthier, happier future where we're like have a, it's both sustainable but higher quality amend that lets us use space travel. Yeah, I really believe like this is the future we should be investing in.

[40:02] bronze age, iron age, biomaterial ageSo you're talking about like there's like the Bronze Age, there's like the Iron Age, and then now there's like the bio material Age. Yeah. And I'm very material centric in case you didn't get that. So I would argue some of those ages in between were also a lot about materials. But yes, I think we are entering the biotechnology age. I think AI is obviously a major thing that's happening right now and no arguments for mayor, but also AI is enabled by, by silicone and, and semiconductors and all those other materials technologies. So that's my bias. But I think this next step that we're starting to see is biotechnology. I mean, the things that we have done on like human health, like direct medical interventions are, are pretty amazing. And also, again, as I mentioned in, in agriculture are pretty amazing. And I think there's more and more acceptance for for biotechnology and it's because of like results. So used used properly, like all technologies I think, I think we can develop solutions for to like make the world better. Yeah, interesting. So for AI, for example, there's a ChatGPT came out and that create like a call for like more capital, more resources pile again, like what would be an example of something that would show the world that biomaterials is the future? Honestly, this is something we've been talking about. OK, I'm always caught between like super cool and then like short term feasible and and compelling. So I think the like if we were allowed to do it, I think like self healing roads would still would be my answer that speaks to everyone. So I know I've talked about this all the time and it's because I've always staring at potholes and often having problems with my tires. But I think that would be like 1 where people would really see it like on a daily basis that would make a huge difference. Another one that we've talked about is that I think people would relate to would be like mold detection and mitigation. Maybe that's an ethical problem you're trying to think about. Like, it's not just, it's what do people like, really see and are concerned about every day. I think that's what you need to like, it needs to be visible for people to to like, respond to it and like, want to invest in it. And so, yeah, I think houses and roads are like the obvious, obvious things. Yeah, it effects everybody. Effects everybody, yes. That's good. So for the closing question, I always ask the guests, what's the kindest thing anyone's ever done for you? That's such an interesting

[42:27] closing questionquestion. There's so many nice things people have done for me already. That's like, OK, well, this has nothing to do with LV. So, but I just as I mentioned before, we started speaking that I just finished my grades for this semester. So it's in my head. So one thing that's wonderful about Cordell is my department and I feel like people are always looking out for each other. And when I when I started, I was teaching a large undergraduate class, EGRD 2020, and somebody changed my TA assignment so that I would have like an absolutely phenomenal a head TA to support me and it made an amazing difference. He's great. Andy Pashanel, if you're listening, thank you for helping me make it through my first semester. And so they, one of my colleagues like actively saw what I was set up as and then altered it so that I would like have a really good first semester here. You were set up for success. I was set up for success and they it was. I didn't ask for it. I didn't know anything but someone went out of their way to help me out. That's so great. Thanks for sharing, Meredith.