Pl
Paulo Rocha
The Bioelectronics & Bioenergy Research Lab works at the interface of materials science, electronics, and biology. We design, fabricate and characterize devices and systems that record, modulate and harvest cell-cell communication.
Global concern about climate change has been growing in recent years, with a lot of research dedicated to better, more ecologically safe energy generation. Bioenergy, which involves deriving energy from biological sources, is one of the many energy resources available, and it has steadily been gaining more attention. The EU-funded Generating Energy from Electroactive Algae (GREEN) project aims to establish a world-leading research centre focussed on the development of radical new ways to generate ecologically safe energy from algae. The project plans to introduce a self-sustainable bioenergy generator with a power output much higher than most current state-of-art bioenergy generators, thus bringing the EU one step closer to its green goals.
To deliver the new bioenergy generator, it is essential to understand 1) which materials and 3D electrode geometries comprise larger cell sensities and enable a more efficient charge transfer from the living organisms to the electrode 2) which organisms provide the higher output powers, and 3) how the electric circuitry will be developed to store and deliver the generated power.
