Published: March 20, 2017

Wil Srubar, Sherri Cook and Mija Hubler of civil, environmental and architectural engineering and Ryan Gill of chemical and biological engineering received a four-year, $1.8 million award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for "Programmable Resurrection of Materials Engineered to Heal Exponentially Using Switches (PROMETHEUS).

The objective is to engineer a hybrid living material composed of an inert structural scaffold (i.e., sand) that supports the rapid growth and long-term viability of living cells (i.e., microorganisms) that endow the final material with both biological (i.e., self-repair) and structural (i.e., load-bearing) function. It is a 4-year, $1.8 Million project that integrates synthetic biology, microbiology, materials science, architecture, and structural mechanics.