Mycelium Bioprocess Design
As the Head of Bioprocess Design at Ecovative, I have focused on refining a comprehensive technical toolkit that integrates both mycological and statistical tools to navigate the complexities of mycelium materials development. Central to this refinement has been the creation of a framework that efficiently reconciles high-dimensional data and non-linear process variables, ensuring precise control over mycelium morphology, bioefficiency, and growth kinetics. A key element of this toolkit is the strategic use of Gen AI tools to facilitate 'just-in-time' learning, empowering Ecovative’s R&D team to rapidly acquire and apply new knowledge. This approach enhances the adaptability of the team, allowing for the seamless incorporation of advanced design-of-experiment methodologies, data-driven decision-making, and feature engineering into our biofoundry workflows. By embedding these tools into our R&D processes, we have established a dynamic system for continuous learning and optimization, driving forward innovation in mycelium-based materials.
Mycelium Biofoundries
Advancing biofoundry paradigms is central to my work with Ecovative and essential to overcoming the complexities of mycelium material development, particularly the high-dimensional challenges associated with fungal growth kinetics, morphology, and material properties. By leveraging adaptive design-of-experiment strategies alongside machine learning, our biofoundry systems enable the efficient exploration of vast parametric spaces, revealing novel insights into the optimization of bioprocesses. Central to this progress is the development of novel cultural paradigms for controlling mycelium morphology, bioefficiency, and growth kinetics. These innovations are paired with the design of solid-state bioreactor systems that support the unique demands of fungal systems, allowing for high-throughput experimentation. In conjunction with these advancements, we integrate machine learning tools to create predictive models that dynamically inform process refinement. This synergy between biological engineering, reactor design, and computational learning revolutionizes our approach to solid-state fermentation and mycological engineering, ensuring that each iterative cycle is efficient, informed, and predictive. Ultimately, the biofoundry serves as a transformative framework, merging biology and technology to drive innovation in sustainable material development.
Key Projects
Development of a novel Raimbault column bioreactor system that simulated deep packed bed dynamics and used predictive modeling with high-throughput hyphal network analysis to link inter-particle hyphal network morphologies to the macro-performance of mycelium composites.
Creation of novel bench-scale tray bioreactor systems for aerial mycelium, along with innovative cultural formats for high-throughput featurization of mycelium kinetics, morphology, and behavior. These systems were linked with a recursive ML-driven adaptive design-of-experiment platform to form a holistic morphological engineering and process development system for aerial mycelium.
Development of automated workflows for quantitative featurization and feature engineering from image, 3D scan, and time-series data, facilitating efficient translation of this data into machine learning models for process optimization and predictive modeling.
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Ecovative’s Mycelium Foundry and Research Platform
Aerial Mycelium Technology
My most recent work has focused on elaborating scaleable cultivation strategies and morphological engineering principles central to Ecovative’s novel AirMycelium™ technology. In this capacity I have worked to develop key intellectual property underpinning both food and alternative leather applications of this technology, while also working to elucidate the kinetic, behavioral, and physical organizing principles of the underlying aerial mycelium phenotype. This effort required a multi-disciplinary R&D approach leveraging biofoundry paradigms, novel solid-state fermentation bioreactors and cultural formats, and advanced machine learning tools.
Mycelium Composites
From 2011-2019 I worked on mycelium composite process and product development exploring and developing packaging materials, low to high-density boards, buoys, foams, and even wetland rafts. Most critically I worked to develop core mycelium cultivation methodologies which enabled the world’s first scaled mycelium composite manufacturing systems. Additionally, from 2017-2019 I worked on a multi-disciplinary R&D team which developed a novel actively aerated deep-bed bioreactor system for monolithic mycelium composite production, which was realized through an innovative combination of mycelium cultivation techniques, bioreactor engineering, and manufacturing process development (see Hyde et. al. 2019).
Bioprospecting & Fungal Cultivation
Critical to my career in mycelium technology development is a core interest in designing with the physical and behavioral richness of filamentous fungi. Every project starts with attention to and respect for the natural physicality and behavior of each strain I work with, and elucidating the functional phenotype of each strain is central to realizing the value potential of mycelium technology. To realize this a multi-disciplinary approach combining fungal biology, bioreactor and cultural method development, physical/metabolic/kinetic featurization, and high-dimensional learning is critical to my practice. Some additional projects include:
Development of high-throughput aerial mycelium phenotyping systems (proprietary and unpublished).
Development of quantitative analysis methods for inter-particle hyphal morphologies in mycelium composites with elaboration to predictive models for macro-mechanical properties (as partially described in Hyde et al).
Developing methodologies which leverage ecological and temporal dynamics to achieve high-volume material myceliation for scaled mycelium composite manufacturing (as described in Hyde et al. 2019 and United States Patent Grant 9914906).
Description of fruiting conditions for mushroom species for which mushroom production had not been previously described (proprietary and unpublished).
Elaboration of strain isolation and culture maintenance methodologies for the culinarily important mycoparasite Hypomyces lactifluorum (proprietary and unpublished).
Bioprospecting and process development projects spanning hundreds of species and countless strains across the Basidiomycota and Ascomycota.
Hypomyces lactifluorum, the mycoparasite responsible for the lobster mushroom, in culture.
Myco-Relational Aesthetics
My personal mycological practice leverages fungal biology, image processing pipelines, open-source technology, and data science to explore mediated interactions with fungal physicality, behavior, and kinetics. Ultimately reaching for translational tools for mitigating the physical, linguistic, and temporal differences between human and fungal perspectives. This practice is very much a non-linear strategy for elaborating a deeper basis and toolkit for practical morphological engineering with filamentous fungi, where endpoint application is typically in my Mycomaterial & Mycofabrication development work with Ecovative.
Sample of a contribution to Yenikapi’s Museum - Museum of Exhalation, an artwork by Orkan Telhan for the 17th Istanbul Biennial.
Visual Arts - Recent Work
Maintaining a visual arts practice fosters creativity and strengthens the ability to approach complex, high-dimensional, and non-linear problems from multiple perspectives. This cross-disciplinary approach reinforces a mindset that is well-suited for navigating intricate challenges in scientific practice.
My most recent visual work explores interactions between the history of metalpoint drawing combined with the camera obscura/camera lucida as an early photographic technique, and the formative months and years of AI image generation. These works are elaborated from hallucinatory image generations, leveraging the AI image generator as a instant cultural lens where the formative nature of it’s development allows for a free-associative creativity (“hallucinations”). Assuming this hallucinatory capacity represents a particular moment in the overall arch of the technology’s development that is unlikely to last long, metalpoint transcription is used as a means of exploring this momentary hallucinatory capacity.
Nickel, sterling silver, and brass on gessoed paper, 15x15cm, 2023
Nickel, sterling silver, .99 silver, and brass on gessoed paper, 15x15cm, 2023
Copper, brass, nickel, sterling silver, and .99 silver on gessoed paper, 12.5x16cm, 2024
Nickel, sterling silver, .99 silver, and brass on gessoed paper, 14x20cm, 2024
Gold on gessoed paper, 13x18cm, 2024
Nickel and .99 silver on gessoed paper, 20x20cm, 2024
Nickel and .99 silver on gessoed paper, 17.5x16.5cm, 2024
Gold on gessoed paper, 16x16.5cm, 2024
Nickel and .99 silver on gessoed paper, 19x20cm, 2024
Gold on gessoed paper, 17x18cm, 2024
Nickel and .99 silver on gessoed paper, 17x19cm, 2024
Silver and colored pencil on gessoed paper, 10.5x15cm, 2024
Visual Arts - Past Work
My previous work in the visual arts approached image making as a hybridizing oscillation of analogue photography, abstract sculptural constructions, and painting - which, as a holistic process, approached the act and object of painting as a matter of plasticity not necessarily qualified by the use of wet media - aimed at discovering the potential for an alternate reality; a larger world inside the smaller construction. Photography - utilizing focal variation, tilt-shift aspects, and templates used inside the camera in a process that resembled printmaking - was used to deconstruct a physical model built via continuous decomposition and reconstitution, with an evolution measured in years. This deconstructive process opened the door for a free-associative exploration, which was directly drawn from contemporary folklore laden with blurry photographs in which the human myth-building impulse has found Sasquatches, Chupacabras, aliens, and devils: photography as a canvas for negotiating superstition and myth with the observable world and a window into the bestiary of human imagination.
Untitled Polaroid, 2009
I love you #1, India ink on Frontier print, 10x15 inches, 2009
Morning Apperstition, India ink on digital c-print, 20x30 inches, 2010
Untitled, India ink on Fuji Instanat print
Zygote Behind a Choir, India ink on digital c-print, 20x30 inches, 2010
The Three Angels, India ink on Chromira print, 20x30 inches, 2010
Bellow, India ink on digital c-print, 18x24 inches, 2010
Base Heads, India ink on digital c-print, 12x18 inches, 2010
Untitled, India ink on Fuji Instant print 2011
Untitled, Fuji Instant print 2011
Portrait of a horizon's living memory, India ink on Chromira print, 20x30 inches, 2011
New-Nazca Looking at Itself, India ink and digital print on vinyl, 59x50 inches, 2011
Untitled Hug, India ink on digital print on styrene, 24x36 inches, 2011
Failed Mirroring of a Crowd, India ink on Kodak Endura print mounted to styrene, 18x12 inches, 2011
Ensor Banshee, India ink on Kodak Endura paper mounted to styrene, 30x20 inches, 2011
Untitled Polaroid, 2012
Hopeful Profiles, India ink on Kodak Endura paper mounted to styrene, 20x24 inches, 2012
Terrified Heir, India ink on Kodak Endura paper mounted to styrene, 30x30 inches, 2012
Untitled Positive Man, India ink on Kodak Endura print mounted to styrene, 8x8 inches, 2012
Folded and Punched Explorer-Head, India ink on digital print on vinyl, 57x49 inches, 2011