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Label Free Science, the MIT Way

Date of the session

10/28/2022

Mode of delivery

Hybrid

Time of the session

5:00 pm

Guest Speaker

Dr. Andreas Mershin

About the lecture

This wide-scope talk will take us through some of the research conducted by the MIT Label Free Research Group with a specific focus on the coming Mycotecture opportunity in Mauritius using sugarcane agriwaste to generate mycofoods and carbon-negative composite materials.

Discussion will cover how we got to this, ranging from biophotovoltaics (using photosystem-I complexes to create solar panels) to stabilizing GPCRs on nanostructured semiconductors. We will cover bioelectronic nose applications of such biotechnologies rivalling the trained canine’s ability to diagnose cancers.

We will discuss the processes behind composite building materials via mycelium action on agriwaste and the work being done in our experimental outpost in Namibia and cover some of the recent activities of the Osmocosm and MycoHab Foundations at MIT and over the globe.

The intellectual connective tissues between these topics will be “label-free science” and include cases of spectacular failure and surprising success as discoveries become inventions, become MIT-associated startups and public-benefit foundations impacting the globe beyond just academia.

About the guest speaker


Dr. Andreas Mershin earned his MSci in Physics and Cosmology at Imperial College London and his PhD in Physics and Biophysics at Texas A&M University. He is currently a Research Scientist with PI Priviledges at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms where he leads the MIT Label Free Research Group that operates in blissful ignorance of any boundaries between physics, biology, materials and information sciences.

From inexpensive photosynthetic solar panels to quantum effects in molecular biology and from cytoskeletal memory encoding, machine olfaction to bioenergy harvesting, his research and the resulting technologies are used by industry and government, exhibited at the Boston Museum of Science and Designer’s Open Exhibition and have been globally covered by CNN, BBC, Wall Street Journal, Discovery Channel, Wired, New Scientist, Nature and Science.

He is co-founder and president of the Osmocosm Public Benefit Foundation, co-founder of www.bio-Hab.org, co-founder of www.scentient.ai