Biomaterials and Food-Opportunities and Challenges

Natural materials offer new avenues for innovation across fields, bringing together, like never before, natural sciences and high technology.<br/><br/>Significant opportunity exists in reinventing naturally-derived materials, such as structural proteins, and applying advanced material processing, prototyping, and manufacturing techniques to these ubiquitously present substances. This approach help us imagine and realize sustainable, carbon-neutral strategies that operate seamlessly at the interface between the biological and the technological worlds.<br/> <br/>Some of these attributes make these materials ideally suited for interfaces with food from multiple perspectives, ranging from the aesthetic, to flavors, to therapeutics to name a few. These applications leverage functional aspects that include biomaterials-based applications in edible and implantable electronics, food preservation, energy harvesting, wearable sensors, compostable technology, distributed environmental sensing. These opportunities will be outlined in this talk presenting a survey of the possibilities that lie ahead.