MY-CO BUILD Collaborative Research Centre successfully approved!

At the end of November, the German Research Foundation (DFG) approved nine new Collaborative Research Centres (SFB) to further strengthen cutting-edge research at German universities. Among them was SFB1743 "MY-CO BUILD", which aims to develop mycelium-based building materials and will receive a total of around 10.3 million euros in funding over the coming years. In addition to the coordinating university TU Berlin (Prof. Vera Meyer), TUM is also playing a key role in this network with the professorships of J. Philipp Benz and Heiko Briesen.

 MY-CO BUILD in short 

The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) ‘MY-CO BUILD: Biomanufacturing, characterisation, and sustainability assessment of fungal-based building materials’ will develop a new class of biologically produced and biodegradable fungal-based materials from renewable and residual agricultural and forestry resources through pioneering basic research. The potential of fungal biotechnology will be used to research and develop these materials to establish the scientific basis for defined production processes and reproducible properties of fungal-based materials. This includes systematically establishing a process chain that considers all biological and technological aspects of the manufacturing process from the nano- to the macroscale, thus allowing conclusions to be drawn for targeted material design. 

For the first time, the CRC will bring together different disciplines in an interdisciplinary network to investigate the biological, mechanical, physical, chemical, thermal, acoustic, and architectural properties of fungal-based materials as a function of the genetic make-up of the fungal production organism used, the properties of the agricultural and forestry substrates, and the manufacturing and processing methods. To describe, understand, and predict multiscale interactions, new mathematical models accompanied by numerical simulations will be developed to enable tailoring of material properties. 

In addition to this fundamental understanding of the relationships between the hierarchical structural elements and the properties of the fungal-based materials, stability, ageing, and biodegradability testing will be carried out during the development of these materials, as well as AI-based sustainability assessments. With the processes and methods developed here, the CRC aims to break new inter- and transdisciplinary ground for the development and establishment of sustainable biomaterials that are not possible yet with current approaches.

Contribution of TUM 

The Chair of Fungal Biotechnology in Wood Science (Prof. J. Philipp Benz) contributes its expertise in fungal degradation and conversion processes of wood and biomass substrates to the development of mycelium-based materials. The Chair of Systems Process Engineering (Prof. Heiko Briesen) contributes to the optimal design of the production, scaling and evaluation of the new materials using µCT-based imaging of the fungal substrate interaction and model-based process and system analyses.

Integration into a strong network 

Besides TU Berlin and TUM, MY-CO BUILD brings together partners from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Bochum University of Applied Sciences, the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy (ATB) in Potsdam and Aalborg University (Denmark). Together, the consortium is laying the scientific foundations for establishing fungi as sustainable "builders" for future construction and housing concepts.