Student Team Culina Awarded at BDC 2020

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The finalist team, composed by students from both Newcastle and Northumbria University, was selected by the seminar instructors at the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE) to compete in the international BioDesign Challenge Summit 2020 on the 15-19 of June. Usually, the Summit is held at MOMA in New York but this time the competition was held online, open to everyone through a live stream on YouTube. During those 4 days, 45 finalist teams from 12 countries presented their work on the future applications of biotechnology.

 

The selected team from the HBBE was the only one representing the UK in this year's competition. We are pleased to announce that our BDC student team, Culina, won the BioDesign Challenge Outstanding Presentation Award as well as making the top 6. This was an incredible achievement as it was the first time we participated in the Challenge and we all experienced difficulties as the country went into lockdown in the midst of the seminar. Nonetheless, the finalist team from the HBBE seminar did a phenomenal job with their project, representing a model for collaboration in these unprecedented times. The finalist group was a multidisciplinary team composed by Pippa Mcleod-Brown, who is finishing her MA in Architecture, Emma Riley, an MRes student in Biotechnology & Biodesign, both Newcastle University students and Dawoon Jeong and Adrienne Dy, who are completing their MA studies in Multidisciplinary Innovation at Northumbria University.

 
"The Culina team believe that re-conceptualizing our everyday experiences with food has the potential to re-build the food economy and achieve self-sustenance."
 
 
Their project seeks to pave the way for a new food economy, in response to global food insecurity amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. They developed an idea that combined synthetic biology, microbiology and architecture in order to create a futuristic 'kitchen' concept - which they call "the Culina experience". By exploring this concept they designed an animal-free protein production process that offers exotic culinary experiences to diners by offering a menu composed of items such as unicorn, dinosaur or Dodo meat. Read more about the team's inspiring work here.

Culina is an HBBE project developed as part of the BioDesign Challenge seminar in 2020.
Students:  Adrienne Dy, Dawoon Jeong, Emma Riley & Pippa McLeod-Brown 

Tutors/instructors: Ben Bridgens, Dr Gregory R Young, Jennifer Wright, Dr John Allan, Dr Josh Loh, Prof. Martyn Dade-Robertson, Dr Meng Zhang, Prof. Ruth Morrow & Thora H Arnardottir

Thora Arnardottir
Thora Arnardottir

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