Bezos Earth Fund grant has set up a new centre at Imperial College London to develop sustainable food solutions.
The fund has allocated a grant of $30 million (€28.00 million) to the centre, which will focus on alternative food products that are 'economically and environmentally friendly, nutritious, affordable, and tasty'.
The funding is part of a $100 million commitment by the Bezos Earth Fund to develop sustainable protein alternatives and expand consumer choice and an overall $1 billion investment in food transformation.
Dr Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the Earth Fund commented, “The Bezos Earth Fund is proud to support Imperial as the home of our second sustainable protein centre.
“By 2050 the world population will be over 10 billion, so now is the time to rethink the way we produce and consume food. This work will help ensure that our future includes more protein options – and that they taste great, are nutritious and come at low cost.”
In May of this year, the Bezos Earth Fund opened its first sustainable protein centre at North Carolina State University.
Bezos Centre For Sustainable Protein
Spanning across seven academic departments at Imperial, the Bezos Centre For Sustainable Protein will advance research into precision fermentation, cultivated meat, bioprocessing and automation, nutrition, and AI and machine learning.
Professor Hugh Brady, president of Imperial College London, stated, “Food security is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity. For a sustainable future, we need to ensure that people across the world can be fed adequately and nutritiously with minimal impact on biodiversity, climate and our wider natural environment.”
“Imperial has the leading-edge research, innovation, partnerships and convening power to advance global food systems and we are very excited by the potential of our new Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein.”
The centre will implement rational and computational-guided engineering strategies with automation at biofoundries – where cells are turned into mini-factories producing useful products – to accelerate the development and scaling up of new bio-based processes, Bezos Earth Fund noted.
