Add to Your Week of Synthetic Biology Innovation with ARPA-E!

The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) wants to hear your ideas, challenges, and perspectives at their Bio-Inspired Design Working Group. The session will take place at the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, California, on Monday, September 30, 2019 – just one day before the start of this year’s SynBioBeta conference.ARPA-E funds early-stage, high-impact energy technologies that have the potential to radically improve energy efficiency of all economic sectors, reduce energy imports and reduce energy related emissions, including greenhouse gases.Over the last ten years, ARPA-E has provided over $2 billion in research funding with over $250 million geared towards biologically oriented solutions. As ARPA-E continues to explore new biobased program opportunities, bioinspired design solutions have emerged as a particular area of interest, which could result in transformational energy technologies.This exploratory working session aims to identify specific energy and emissions challenge areas, explore emerging biological tools, and frame the challenges of scaling bio-inspired solutions to an energy-relevant scale. Session participants will have the opportunity to identify bio-inspired needs, brainstorm potential areas for ARPA-E to target in future program efforts, and discuss the path forward to affect a disruptive change. Join us in discussing challenges and exploring opportunities such as:

• Going beyond biochemical synthesis
• Moving beyond traditional bioreactor fermentation processing
• Involving self-assembly processes or exploiting/adapting biological complexity
• Biological system integration and control strategies

Attendance at ARPA-E meetings is by invitation. If you would like to join the conversation, please email ARPA-E-workshops@hq.doe.gov providing a brief statement of your perspective and what you would hope to contribute to this session.