Image featuring Dr Jenny Zhang, Prof. Erwin Reisner and Dr Rachel Egan. Text curated by Dr Fiorella Dell'Olio; Image by Nathan Pitt ©University of Cambridge.
The Yusuf Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge is proud to announce its leadership of a groundbreaking €4 million innovation grant awarded by the European Innovation Council (EIC) Pathfinder Challenge.
Coordinated by Dr Jenny Zhang, whose research focuses on biohybrid approaches for energy conversion, with Prof. Erwin Reisner as Co-Investigator and Dr Rachael Egan as postdoctoral researcher, this marks the first time Cambridge has served as lead partner on an EIC collaborative grant – an exciting milestone in the University’s global research impact.
The project brings together a top-tier European consortium including the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) led by Prof. Stephan Sylvest Keller with Prof. Jenny Emnéus; the Technical University of Munich (TUM) led by Prof. Nicolas Plumeré with Prof. Magnus Fröhling; Imperial College London led by Prof. Rodrigo Ledesma Amaro with Prof. Sonja Billibeck and the food technology innovator Solar Foods led by Dr Juha-Pekka Pitkänen. Together, the team is setting out to tackle one of humanity’s greatest challenges: how to produce food sustainably without traditional agriculture.
The team aims to design a solar-powered device that combines photosynthetic bacteria with food-producing microbes to convert carbon dioxide (CO₂) and nitrogen (N₂) from the air into essential nutrients like proteins and fats – eliminating the need for traditional farming. If successful, this would be the first functional prototype to achieve at least one per cent solar-to-food conversion efficiency. Such a device could revolutionise sustainable food production, not only in remote or resource-scarce regions on earth but also for future space missions.
Key innovations driving the project:
• Electron transfer efficiency: enhancing the interface between bacteria and electrodes to allow efficient energy conversion.
• Microbial synergy: engineering microbial systems that can reliably produce both proteins and lipids.
• Device integration: building a self-contained, efficient system that unites biological and electrical components for direct nutrient harvesting.
Division of expertise:
• Cambridge will lead the development of the anode, using cyanobacteria to extract electrons from water via photosynthesis.
• TUM is responsible for the cathode, focusing on hydrogen production technologies.
• Solar Foods will build on TUM’s work to convert hydrogen into proteins using proprietary microbial processes.
• Imperial will create new microbes to convert hydrogen into oils (lipids), collaborating closely with TUM.
• DTU and Cambridge will co-develop novel electrode materials and design the overall integrated system to bring all components into a cohesive stand-alone unit.
Dr Zhang states: “This is an extraordinary opportunity to rethink what solar can do and how food can be produced.”