2025 ELM Workshop

The Engineered Living Materials Workshop brings together academic, industry, and agency collaborators to discuss the promise and challenges of engineered living materials (ELMs). This developing class of material has additional or unique functionalities resulting from the inclusion of living cells on or within the material. These functionalities can include self-assembly, self-repair, and activity that can enable increased resilience, conversion of compounds, biomaterial production, drug manufacturing, energy generation or storage, and more. ELMs are expected to provide improved sustainability in material development, manufacturing, deployment, and use.

The workshop promises to be a blend of fundamental and applied presentations on ELM research, small working groups, and discussion panels to define priority research areas, identify central challenges and potential solutions, and understand the needs of this emerging community.

The event takes a dialogic approach where all participants are encouraged to share their perspective, develop coalitions, and impact the direction of the ELM industry. We welcome those from academia, industry, government, and non-profits across disciplines and career levels.

Interactive sessions will explore:

• Advances in manufacturing and functionality.
• Exploration of diverse chassis and matrices.
• Challenges in scalability, translation, and societal adoption.
• Educating and training the next generation.
• Funding and collaborative opportunities.

Markus Buehler, MIT

Seunghyun Sim, UC Irvine

Adam Arkin, UC Berkeley