Ongoing Projects

Title: Bioindustrial Engineering for Sustainable Tomorrow (BEST) (PI: Juliana M. Leite N. de Moura Bell)
Goal: Immerse graduate students in a comprehensive traineeship where they will acquire key technical and professional skills for bioindustrial engineering, enabling these cohorts of scientists and engineers to tackle global challenges in food security, environmental sustainability, and human and animal health
Agency: National Science Foundation

Title: Transforming Nut Hulls into Nutritious and Sustainable Food Products (PI: Ruihong Zhang)
Goal: Optimization and scale-up of hull-to-fungi conversion processes and fungi cultivation and processing for food applications
Agency: Resnick Agricultural Innovation Program, Phase II

Title: Advancement of Yeast Fat Production from Almond Hulls
Goal: Develop an economically viable yeast fat bioproduction technology
Agency: Resnick Agricultural Innovation Program, Phase II

Title: Production and Characterization of a Biobetter Recombinant AAT-Fc Therapeutic Protein
Goal: Develop methods for rapid evaluation of construct designs, transient expression using plant viral vectors, and glycan redecoration for AAT-Fc protein production
Agency: The Alpha-1 Foundation

Title: Future Foods for Space: Mobilizing the Future Foods Community to Accelerate Advances in Space Health
Goal: A professional development program for faculty and post-docs working in food science/technology/engineering/systems to prepare them to translate their research for space health applications
Agency: Translational Research Institute for Space Health, Baylor College of Medicine/NASA

Title: Technology Development of Lemna minor (Duckweed) for Human Therapeutic Production in Space
Goal: A NASA graduate fellowship for technology development for Lemna sp transformation
Agency: NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity

Title: Leveraging Agricultural Waste Streams to Cultivate Aspergillus oryzae into a Nutritional Source for Rural and Urban Food Deserts
Goal: An educational and workforce development project to introduce undergraduates at UC Davis and Sacramento City College to fungal based foods produced using local agricultural waste streams
Agency: BioMADE Academic Challenge – Future Food, Phase I

Title: Laying the Scientific Foundation for Sustainable Cultivated Meat Production (PI: David Block)
Goal: Convergent research to further cultivated meat technologies including cell line development, media optimization, structured foods, scale up and techno-economic modelling
Agency: National Science Foundation

Title: Center of Excellence in Plants for Space (we are unfunded international academic partners)
Goal: The Plants for Space Center of Excellence conducts research, development, training and outreach to provide space explorers with nutritious foods, and on-demand supply of materials and medicines.
Agency: Australian Research Council Center of Excellence Program

Title: CUBES-II: Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space v. II
Goal: Research to improve the space readiness of technologies developed in CUBES I
Agency: NASA

Title: Rapid Assistance (for) Coronavirus Economic Response (RACER)
Goal: To develop and quantitatively compare rapid and scalable heterologous protein expression systems for production of antigens.
Agency: National Institute of Standards and Technology/BioIndustrial Manufacturing and Design Ecosystem

Recently Completed Projects

Title: Proof of Concept Project for Transformation and Production of Therapeutic Proteins in Duckweed sp
Goal: Transformation and production of recombinant proteins in Lemna sp.
Agency: Phylloceutical Ventures, LLC

Title: Project Caterpillar
Goal: Scale up of microalgae across different production scales/platforms
Agency: BioMADE

Title: Routes to Domestic Production of Novel Polymer Precursors
Goal: Review and techno-economic modelling of alternative production platforms
Agency: BioMADE

Title: A Plant-Based Platform for Just in Time Medications
Goal: Production of life-saving therapeutic proteins in a short time in the extreme conditions and resource limited environment that will be encountered in deep space exploration.
Agency: Translational Research Institute for Space Health, Baylor College of Medicine/NASA

Title: Rapid scale up of COVID-19 biologics in mammalian and plant systems
Goal: Production and test COVID-19-related glycoprotein in mammalian and plant systems that enable rapid scale up.
Agency: UC Davis COVID-19 Research Accelerator Funding Track (CRAFT) Program,

Title: Center for Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space (CUBES)
Goal: Development of platform technologies for biomanufacturing on Mars to provide food, fuels, pharmaceuticals and shelters for colonists
Agency: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Title: Advancing Diversity by Educating the Professors of Tomorrow (ADEPT)
Goal: Advancement and Achievement via Graduate Education and designing and building the Path-to-the-Professoriate (P2P) mentoring network.
Agency: University of California-Hispanic Serving Institutions Doctoral Diversity Initiative.

Title: Application of Optimization Tools to Achieve Low-Cost Cultivated Meat Production
Goal: This project is designed to provide preliminary data across a number of linked projects that can be used to demonstrate the feasibility of generating cultivated meat.
Agency: The Good Food Institute

Title: Scalable Plant-Based Production of Affordable Protein Drugs
Goal: The goal of this project is to develop, demonstrate, and optimize a new plant-based biologics biomanufacturing process that can universally be applied for the production of many orphan biologics.
Agency: National Science Foundation (PFI-RT)

Title: Growing Convergence Research: Laying the Scientific and Engineering Foundation for Sustainable Cultivated Meat Production
Goal: This proposal is focused on convergent research that encompasses the science, engineering, economics, sustainability, and consumer acceptance of cultivated meat production.
Agency: National Science Foundation (GCR)

Title: Technoeconomic Analysis and Engineering Design of Plant-Made Color Agent
Goal: To develop a technoeconomic model to evaluate the capital requirements and cost of goods for a plant-made colorant
Agency: Private Funding

Title: Promoting health and economic development in the Sundarban region of India through improved nutritional and agricultural education and outreach
Goal: To design and implement a Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program based on best-practice crop management techniques applicable to the climate-challenged regions
Agency: University Outreach and International Programs (UOIP) and Global HealthShare

Title: Growth, viability, stability, purification, and characterization of rice-calli expressing recombinant protein
Goal: To develop appropriate conditions and factors for viability, growth, induction, stability, purification, and characterization of rice-calli expressing target molecule
Agency: Kirin Ltd.

Title: Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Global Biodefense (PERC-GB)
Goal: Development and implementation of convergent technologies capable of providing detection, diagnostics, and medical countermeasures to protect people, animals, and plants against biological and chemical threats.
Agency: National Science Foundation

Title: The BioIndustrial Manufacturing and Design Ecosystem (BioMADE) Institute
Goal: Community-focused bioindustrial manufacturing innovation institute dedicated to accelerating biomanufacturing for the next-generation bioeconomy
Agency: Department of Defense (UC Davis is the one of the academic governing members)

Title: Simulating Manufacturing Scale Aerobic Fermentation in Pressurized Miniature Bioreactor
Goal: Evaluate a pressurized scale-down model for fermentation development to determine if it can replace more costly intermediate scale fermentation systems
Agency: The Bioindustrial Manufacturing and Design Ecosystem (BioMADE) Institute

Title: Bioprinting Transgenic Plant Cells for Chemical and Biological Countermeasure Production
Goal: To determine the feasibility of formulating transgenic plant cells into a 3D printable bioink
Agency: Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC

Title: Production of Heterologous Protein in Plants
Goal: Designing and developing stronger gene constructs to produce therapeutic target proteins.
Agency: Ajinomoto Co., Inc.

Title: Glycan Modulation of Pharmaceutical Glycoproteins by In Vitro Enzymatic Approaches
Goal: Impact of glycosylation on plant-made bioscavengers
Agency: Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)

Title: Technoeconomic Analysis of Plant-Made Endolysins for Food Safety
Goal: To develop a technoeconomic model to evaluate the capital requirements and cost of goods for a plant-made food safety additive
Agency: UC Davis Innovation Institute for Food and Health

Title: U.S.-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Agriculture and Food Security (USPCAS-AFS)
Goal: Developing climate-resilient plant-based recombinant subunit vaccine against Foot and Mouth Disease for cattle
Agency: United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Title: Preparing Engineering Graduate Students for the 21st Century
Goal: A graduate training program to help diversify our engineering graduate programs
Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF)

Title: UC Davis ADVANCE:  Institutional Transformation to Build and Sustain a Diverse Community of Innovative STEM Scholars
Goal: Programs for recruitment, retention and promotion of women STEM faculty
Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF)

Title: Promoting health and economic development in the Sundarban region of India through improved nutritional and agricultural education and outreach
Goal: To design and implement a Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program based on best-practice crop management techniques applicable to the climate-challenged regions
Agency: University Outreach and International Programs (UOIP) and Global HealthShare

Title: Novel Bioreactor-Based Systems for Producing Ebola Monoclonal Antibodies in Nicotiana benthamiana Plant Cell Suspension Culture
Goal: Development of a plant cell bioreactor system for production of ZMapp monoclonal antibodies
Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF)

Title: In Vitro Evaluation of a Plant-Made Alpha-1-Antitrypsin
Goal: Analysis of neutrophil elastase inhibition of plant-made AAT, comparison with human plasma derived AAT
Agency: Alpha-1 Foundation

Title: Plant Based Manufacturing of Orphan Drug Human Biobetter Alpha-1-Antitrypsin
Goal: Downstream process development and techno-economic modeling for transient production of alpha-1 antitrypsin in Nicotiana benthamiana
Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF), Partnerships for Innovation: Accelerating Innovation Research- Technology Transfer (PFI: AIR-TT)

Title: Dynamic social networks: from research to marketplace
Goal: To develop collaboration software platform for content sharing within and among organizations
Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF), I-CORPS

Title: Recombinant BChE Production by Transient Agroinfiltration in Nicotiana benthamiana using a CMV Based Expression System
Goal: To develop in vitro sialylation technology for plant expressed proteins and to demonstrate proof of concept using butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) produced by transient agroinfiltration in wild‐type Nicotiana benthamiana
Agency: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Title: Rwanda Dairy Competitiveness Program II (RDCP II)
Goal: To serve as technical assistance group to help Land O’Lakes, Inc., International Development (LOL-ID) advance the goals of their RDCP II to identify key sources of morbidity and mortality on smallholder dairy farms and in-country training workshops, specifically focused on the animal health side of farm-management practices to build the capacity
Agency: United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Land O Lakes-International Development (LOL-ID)

Title: Viability, growth, stability and expression study of formulated and lyophilized rice calli (CellBrix) expressing recombinant butyrylcholinesterase (rBChE)
Goal: Production of recombinant butyrylcholinesterase (rBChE) in rice cell suspension culture and excretion of rBChE from metabolically-regulated transgenic cell cultures
Agency: Leidos, Inc.

Title: Alternative Manufacturing Processes for Recombinant Human Butyrylcholinesterase
Goal: Production of recombinant butyrylcholinesterase (rBChE) in rice cell suspension culture
Agency: SAIC, Inc.