It’s surreal! CosmoCrops all over the world
Our awesome iGEM team - CosmoCrops - is on everybody's lips these days. From Denmark to Russia, from China to the US – all over the globe the story is told of the team that wants to bring sustainable bioproduction to space and supply astronauts with 3D printable bioplastic, foodstuff and medicine. What is going on?!
Today CosmoCrops is featured in Bulgarian news, yesterday it was in China and the UK and the day before that the American ‘Digital Trends’ reported on CosmoCrops. Digital Trends has in the order of 25 million readers per month.
See the growing list here ...>
Team member Joachim Steen Larsen is blown away by the formidable media coverage: “It’s completely surreal! None of us in CosmoCrops had expected so much media coverage of our project. Just getting the project in Danish media would have been a success. But now seeing how a story about us pops up somewhere in the World on a daily basis is amazing and overwhelming.”
Thinking out of the box
Key to their success is thinking out of the box, he says, when reflecting on why CosmoCrops resonates with such a wide audience:
“Much of what we are doing has been done before – but nobody thought about putting it together like we do. Co-cultures are nothing new, but nobody thought about separating the two organisms like we do or that by the use of sugar-producing cyanobacteria, we can make the production sustainable.
Combined with the fact that 3D-printing is very ‘hot’ right now and everybody wants to know how this can make our lives better. Here our projects become interesting because it provides a way to produce all the materials we need, from screwdrivers to footwear, in a sustainable, biodegradable way. On top of that, we aim at making this device for space travel – something I guess everybody has dreamt of at some point in their life.”
Fundamental insights by societal dialogue
The reception of their project has sparked new insights to the teams’ understanding of their own impact as well as the level of societal readiness to look for new solutions:
Joachim Steen Larsen elaborates:
“As a team we have realized that our project is not too ambitious – something we were a little afraid of – and that sometimes it can even be an advantage to come up with a ‘crazy idea’.
But the most important insight we have gained from all this, is that our society is fundamentally realizing the consequences of our way of life here on Earth and is ready to find more sustainable ways of living, including the possibility of living on other planets.“
The adventure continues: CosmoCrops start-up
Now the team is even looking into making a start-up out of CosmoCrops. This will open up a whole new array of opportunities for learning and discovering the possibilities within the project.
But before that, MIT is calling. The countdown is on for the iGEM competition and in a few weeks’ time the team will head to MIT to present the fruits of their hard work at the iGEM Jamboree.
Read more about the team's work here ...>
And we invite you to follow their journey here: