4 GRANTS, 1 PROFESSOR

Imagine a plant glowing to alert a passing drone that there are explosives hidden underground. This could be a reality, helping keep soldiers and citizens safe thanks to one of four research projects that Eric Young, Leonard P. Kinnicutt Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, is working on.

Young recently received four separate grants totaling more than $2 million to support his research into using yeast and fungi to take on significant genetic engineering challenges.

A $719,994 grant from the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

is supporting his research into using fungi and two bacterial strains to monitor underground areas for explosives, such as TNT. Fungi grow in the soil in root-like networks—Young is developing bacteria that will follow that “highway” into the ground to detect the presence of explosives. Another bacterial strain being developed will produce a glowing warning light on the surface that can be spotted by remote cameras or drones.

Young also received a five-year $512,591 CAREER award from the National Science Foundation to engineer organisms to make it easier to develop numerous products—like biofuels, medicines, nutrients, and renewable plastics—fast enough and at scale to make them commercially available.

He received a portion of a $204,148 grant to work with a consortium of universities on a database of articles and repositories for successful synthetic biology experiments, so scientists formulating new experiments can see what worked for other researchers.

Young’s fourth grant—a $580,500 two-year award—from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center is geared to revolutionize the production of a component essential for gene editing therapies.