Technologies search results
16 Results for ''
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Plastivores: Plastic-Degrading Super-Microbes and Enzymes
The Plastic Degradation project identifies microbes from natural sources that have a low-level ability to degrade multiple types of plastic. In the laboratory, with the help of synthetic biology, those microbes then are evolved into much more effective plastic-eating microbes that, in the future, could be globally deployed to decompose plastic waste. -
cSNAP: Eco-Friendly Air Conditioning
Our eco-friendly air conditioning technology is a low-carbon-footprint evaporative cooling system that reduces indoor air temperature without adding humidity. -
Meat Alternative from Vegetable Protein
Nearly 60% of greenhouse gas emissions are linked to the production and processing of meat. Using Wyss-developed technology, an alternative meat can be made from vegetable protein that has the same taste and texture as animal products. -
Origami-Inspired Radiant Cooling for Improved Thermal Health
Origami-inspired Radiant Cooling devices for a broad range of building interiors use microfluidic water-circuits and foldable designs that increase their surface area to achieve more effective cooling. -
Circe: Tailored Fats for Food Applications
Circe Bioscience spun out of the Wyss Institute in 2023 to commercialize their gas-fermentation-based technology that uses engineered microbes to convert greenhouse gases into fats for use in food products without the use of plants or animals. -
Nanoarchitectures for Air Purification
Metalmark is using the Wyss Institute's butterfly-inspired nanoarchitecture coating to create air purification technology that can destroy airborne pollutants including chemicals, viruses, and smog in indoor and outdoor air at a fraction of the cost of current catalytic converter systems. -
Circe: Transforming Greenhouse Gases into Biodegradable Products
Circe is a platform technology that uses engineered microbes to produce valuable, biodegradable synthetic polymers from greenhouse gases, minimizing the environmental impact of manufacturing. Potential applications include biodegradable plastics and packaging, energy-efficient agriculture, clean personal care products, and more. Circe is a platform technology that uses engineered microbes to produce valuable, biodegradable synthetic polymers from greenhouse gases, minimizing the environmental impact of manufacturing. Potential applications include biodegradable plastics and packaging, energy-efficient agriculture, clean personal care products, and more. -
RAPID: Testing for Food Contaminants
Contamination of food by microorganisms such as certain bacteria, viruses and fungi is a constant concern, with even miniscule amounts of certain species posing a risk for foods to become unsafe and spoiled during storage. Current safety and quality tests are often not sensitive enough to detect rare species, and because they first require the... -
Gene Drives
Since the 1940s, researchers have thought of using gene drives to eradicate populations of pests and disease vectors, and to reduce or eliminate invasive species that wreak havoc on natural ecosystems. The idea of a gene drive stems from nature itself, where in sexually reproducing organisms a certain version of a gene is preferentially passed... -
Dynamic Daylight Control System
In the U.S. alone, commercial and residential buildings account for more than 40 percent of the total energy consumption – mostly for lighting. What’s more, the deep building layouts that are typical in the U.S. have led to a complete reliance on artificial lighting systems that are less desirable than natural daylight. Many of the... -
Bioplastics
Humans have produced roughly 8,300 million metric tons of plastic since the 1950s, the vast majority of which has been thrown out as waste. Only about 9% of that plastic waste has been recycled and 12% has been incinerated, leaving 79% of it to accumulate on our land and oceans, harming the environment, the food... -
Liquid-Gated Membranes for Filtration
Just like pores in living organisms that control the absorption and excretion of fluids, gases and solids in response to their environments, flow-gating membranes have proved very useful for many mechanical systems, such as gas and liquid separators, dialysis machines, or open heart bypass pumps. But conventional approaches to create synthetic “gated pores” within those... -
Programmable Robot Swarms
Collective behaviors enable animals like ants to achieve remarkable, colony-level feats through the distributed actions of millions of independent agents. These collective behaviors are inspiring engineers at the Wyss Institute to build simple mobile robots that harness the demonstrated power of the swarm, performing collective tasks like transporting large objects or autonomously building human-scale structures.... -
RoboBees: Autonomous Flying Microrobots
Inspired by the biology of a bee, researchers at the Wyss Institute are developing RoboBees, manmade systems that could perform myriad roles in agriculture or disaster relief. A RoboBee measures about half the size of a paper clip, weighs less that one-tenth of a gram, and flies using “artificial muscles” compromised of materials that contract when... -
Pop-Up MEMS: Origami-Inspired Micromanufacturing
Recent decades have seen rapid development in the manufacture of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) at the micrometer scale, mostly based on silicon wafer processing techniques, with characteristic length scales of millimeters to nanometers. However, standard MEMS techniques are often inappropriate for producing machines with complex 3D topologies and varied constituent materials at the mesoscale, at sizes... -
SLIPS: Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces
The need for an inexpensive, super-repellent surface cuts across a vast swath of societal sectors—from refrigeration and architecture, to medical devices and consumer products. Most state-of-the-art liquid repellent surfaces designed in the last decade are modeled after lotus leaves, which are extremely hydrophobic due to their rough, waxy surface and the physics of their natural...