A tsunami of tranquility passed over the Hunt Institute during the therapy dog visit on Wednesday. Four dogs and their handlers from Heart of Texas Therapy Dogs spent the afternoon bringing a much-needed calm to SMU students taking midterms.
In one corner, a former racing greyhound with a pink leash enjoyed meeting students in one of her first official visits as a therapy dog. By one couch, a seven-year-old sheltie eagerly showed off her ability to sit, shake and roll over. Her handler had made her a crochet collar decorated with colorful Easter eggs to celebrate spring. Close to the door, an old red golden retriever rested on his side and listened to his handler chat with college students.
SMU students filtered in and out of the HI’s doors and stayed anywhere from five minutes to two hours. Almost every interaction began the same way: an apprehensive student would sit down next to a dog and the handler would introduce him. Within seconds, the uncertainty would melt into conversation. Everyone left feeling a little less stressed and more prepared to take on midterms.
As Spring Break comes to an end and the second half of the semester begins to wind up, the Hunt Institute is proud to highlight some of our student’s accomplishments.
This semester Alejandro has been working on Evie Phase II. He has recently committed to a summer internship internship in Florida. He will be working as an integrated supply chain intern with NextEra Energy.
In March, Alissa was awarded the Irene Runnels-Paula McStay College Scholarship from the Dallas Area Alliance for Women in Media Foundation. Alissa is looking forward to competing in the National Student Adverting Competition in Corpus Christi next month. For this competition, groups of students put forward different marketing strategies for a major company. Alissa has also been preparing for the Women Ambassadors Forum that will take place on SMU’s campus in June.
This semester, Anna Grace has been inducted into the Hyer Honor Society and named a Hatton Sumners Scholar. More recently, she spent part of her spring break presenting fashion and copyright research at the AEJMC Southeast Colloquium. The paper that she co-wrote was named Top Paper in the Law & Policy division.
Cullen is currently making videos for The Standard and the Hunt Institute. This summer, he plans to work on the feature film set at SMU. To view some of Cullen’s work, click here.
DeAngelo has been accepted into SMU’s MSPA program for business analytics. Next year, he will begin pursuing his advanced degree in the Cox School of Business. DeAngelo has been nominated for SMU’s Outstanding Senior Man award, an honor reserved for ten graduating seniors.
This semester, Kelsey was inducted into four honor societies: Phi Beta Kappa, Mortar Board Honor Society, Hyer Honor Society and Omicron Delta Epsilon. Over spring break, Kelsey traveled to Israel with the Human Rights Program. She intends to spend this summer interning in Washington, D.C., through the Vaughn Fellowship at the Tower Center.
Maggie is preparing to graduate from SMU with a Master’s Degree in Design and Innovation. This semester she is finishing up her final projects, working on various side projects, and enjoying her remaining months at SMU.
Regenerate. The word is derived from the Latin word “generare,” to create, and the prefix “re,“ meaning again. According to Merrium-Webster, this word means to restore, to form again, and “to change radically and for the better.”
Regenerate. This is the word that triggered a moment of clarity and enlightenment for Corrie Harris, Program Manager of the Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity, during the Higher Education Climate Leadership Summit in early February. Here, members of colleges and universities from across the country came together for a productive discussion of what it means to create a sustainable economy.
Harris spoke on a panel with representatives from Institutes and Centers around the United States. Members of the panel discussed how different university-affiliated organizations are working across sectors to strengthen their local economies.
“You do not have to have the word sustainability in your title to incorporate resilient and sustainable principles into your work and life,” Harris said. “It really boils down to responsible management of resources.”
Harris’ personal highlight from the conference? Hearing Paul Hawken, renowned author of Drawdown, environmentalist and activist, give a keynote address about regenerative development. Regenerative development focuses on reviving, recreating and rethinking our existing practices.
In his address, Hawken recalled a conversation he had with a colleague about the inadequacy of recent environmental efforts.
“We failed,” the colleague said. “It’s game over.”
“I disagree,” Hawken replied. “It’s game on.”
Hawken argues that it’s time to take a step back and listen. For example, we should stop insisting that people ride bicycles to work. Bicycles aren’t always practical. Weather, extra passengers and cargo all complicate the simple “just bike instead” mandate. It is time to think though what people need: safe, reliable and affordable transportation. It is time for innovators to design smarter cars that have a benign effect on the environment. Companies like Tesla have proven that efficient cars can be a practical solution to environmental problems.
“It was the term I was looking for all along,” Harris said in reference to her work in Nicaragua.
Regenerative development is the new guiding concept for Harris as she moves forward with her research in development with the Hunt Institute.
Xiaochen Zhang speaking at the 2018 Spring Seminar on Blockchain at the Hunt Institute SMU/Lyle
“I feel lucky to live in this era where blockchain is emerging,” Xiaochen Zhang, founder of FinTech4Good and keynote speaker for the February 2018 Hunt Institute Seminar Series, said in an interview following his keynote address.
He went on to compare the emergence of blockchain to the emergence of the Internet. There is a new world of possible applications for this technology. His excitement was contagious. The intersection of computer science and inclusive economics is here.
At just ten years old, blockchain is a relatively new way to think about digital records. With new technology comes the ability to empowering others. This semester, the Hunt Institute invited Zhang and Anna Carroll, a graduate student in the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security in SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering, to discuss blockchain and its social implications at the Seminar Series. Chris Kelley, a Senior Fellow in the Hunt Institute, moderated the Q&A session.
Following a welcome speech by Dr. Eva Csaky, director of the Hunt Institute, Carroll explained the use and development of blockchain. Simply put, blockchain is a system of accountability. This system is currently used for projects like cryptocurrency, but has the potential to support social and environmental initiatives.
In his keynote address, Zhang invited members of the audience to picture a world with honest and accurate information at their fingertips. He illustrated this idea with the example of grocery shopping.
“You go to the store and you pick something that says ‘organic,’” Zhang said. “But what makes it organic?”
Audience consisted of industry professionals, faculty, staff, and students all joining the conversation about Blockchain.
Zhang went on to explain that, with blockchain, a producer could attach a QR code to a food label. By scanning the QR code, anyone could have access to the blockchain tracking the supply chain. You could know where the fruit was grown, who tended to it, and how it was shipped to the grocery store. With a blockchain tracking this information, there would be a guarantee of authenticity.
“I’m looking for the next unicorn that can come from this,” Zhang said in an interview after the seminar. Zhang said the best part of his job is the process of “incubating and identifying” the new ideas that have resulted from the development of blockchain. The “unicorn” Zhang is looking for is an idea that can create tangible social impact. His business is blockchain for good, after all.
It is easy to appreciate Zhang’s enthusiasm for blockchain and the possibilities that accompany it. Socially, blockchain can function as a digital ID for people who would have never been able to participate in the international market before. As a financial tool, blockchain has the power to drastically reduce cross-boarder payments. Between currency conversion and bank fees, most people don’t have the option of doing international business. Blockchain has enabled currencies that exist independently of government, enabling peer-to-peer rather than government-to-government business relationships.
Existing applications of blockchain range from tackling climate change, to enabling food traceability, to empowering small entrepreneurs and farmers, to enforcing green finance regulations. Zhang also alluded to blockchain’s potential to enable automatic payment, reduce costs, increase security, and improve analysis. These blockchain-based, high-impact applications can foster inclusive and sustainable economic development.
“It was very impactful to see the relevance of blockchain,” Alejandro Dominguez Garcia, a student analyst at the Hunt Institute, said. “It can directly increase the safety of transactions and it can help several aspects of a business.”
For more information about Zhang’s work, please click here.
For more information about the inclusive economy, please click here.
Xiaochen Zhang, founder of FinTech4Good
Xiaochen Zhang is the President of FinTech4Good and the Blockchain Frontier Group. He leads the design and implementation of FinTech4Goods’s strategy, which aims to introduce high-impact fintech and blockchain solutions to frontier markets through incubation, acceleration, and investment.
Dr. Zhang serves on the Board of Directors of the Crowdfunding Professional Association, the UN ESCAP Digital Economy Task Force, and he is co-chair of Insurance Blockchain Lab, Smart City Blockchain Lab, and Blockchain4SDGs Lab. He is a Senior Advisor to the Inter-American Development Bank and the China Social Entrepreneurs Foundation, and serves on the advisory boards of several innovative start-ups. He brings more than 16 years of thought leadership and global experience with developing and scaling innovative social and environmental solutions in North America, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
Prior to joining FinTech4Good, Xiaochen advised government agencies and multinational organizations on innovation, emerging technologies, and investment in positions at the World Bank, the United Nations, and other international partnership platforms. He has also taught innovation and venture building at leading business schools and served as mentors for many innovative businesses. Zhang has studied at Virginia Tech, and has earned Master’s Degrees from Leipzig University, University of Wroclaw, and the Communication University of China.
Anna Carroll is a graduate student in security engineering at SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering and is a researcher on Dr. Fred Chang’s team at the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security where her research focuses on blockchain. Carroll recently received her bachelor’s degree from SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering in computer science.
Anna layed a foundation for what Blockchain is in preparation for Xiaochen Zhang’s talk.
Carroll was inspired to study cyber security because she believes that it is time for security companies to stop playing the catch up game. More often than not, a security breach is announced and engineers are left scrambling to create a patch and mitigate the damage. Carroll believes in developing software with existing cyber security and keeping up with the pace of technological advances. Anticipating the need for cyber security means that breaches can be prevented instead of patched.
After graduation, Carroll plans to continue cyber security research.
Robert Hunt was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1955. After attending school in Austin and Richardson, he majored in History at the University of Texas in Austin. After completing a Master of Theology at Perkins School of Theology (SMU) he served as associate pastor of the Bethany United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas.
In 1985 he and his wife Lilian moved to Kuala Lumpur, where he taught at the Seminary Theology Malaysia and directed extension education programs. He received a PhD from the University of Malaya in 1993, focusing on Christian relations with Muslims in Southeast Asia. From 1993 to 1997 he taught and directed extension education programs at the Trinity Theological College in Singapore. From 1997 to 2004 he was pastor of the English Speaking United Methodist Church of Vienna, and an adjunct professor in Comparative Religions and International Relations at Webster University in Vienna.
Since 2004 Dr. Hunt has been the Director of Global Theological Education at the Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. He teaches courses in World Religions, Islam, Interreligious Dialogue, Cultural Intelligence, and Mission Studies. Dr. Hunt is author of several books, including The Gospel Among the Nations, A Documentary History of Inculturation, Islam in Southeast Asia, and Muslim Faith and Values: A Guide for Christians.
A strong advocate for using digital technologies to create effective, accessible theological education Dr. Hunt created and manages the Virtual Visiting Professor™ website (http://virtualvisitingprofessor.com), which makes available the best theological teaching from the 2/3rds world to a global constituency. He also created and hosts the podcast Interfaith Encounters that explores interfaith perspectives on contemporary social issues, as well as a blog, YouTube channel, and Facebook pages by the same name.
Dr. Hunt is a certified Cultural Intelligence trainer, Associate of the Tower Center for Political Science, and Hunt Institute Fellow. He is a member of the Board of Scholars of the Journal of Interreligious Dialogue, as well as the Executive Board of the Association of Professors in Mission, the American Society of Missiology, and is editor of the ASM book series. He serves on the steering committees for the SMU Doctor of Liberal Studies and Master of Liberal Studies programs and teaches in both programs
When asked what motivates his work, he replied, “The focus of my professional life, as a teacher and pastor, has been interpretation: helping people understand one another, their history, different cultures and religions, and themselves. I believe that every person, culture, and society has something valuable to offer to others, and that we discover this through critical and appreciative study, open dialogue, and a willingness to learn.”
He has been married for 37 years to Lilian Wong Hunt, a native of Sarawak, Malaysia and has two grown children. Naomi lives with her husband and daughters in Austria and Elliott lives with his wife in Los Angeles.
He speaks Malay and German.
To read more about the Hunt Institute’s work to develop future-focused solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, please clickhere. For the latest news on the Hunt Institute, follow our social media accounts on LinkedIn,Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We invite you to listen to our Podcast calledSages & Seekers. If you are considering engaging with the institute, you candonate, orsign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.
Dr. Eric Larson is a Hunt Institute Fellow and an associate professor in the computer science department at SMU. He is also a member of the Darwin Deason Institute for Cybersecurity, Center for Global Health, and SMU AT&T Center for Virtualization. Dr. Larson is a founding associate editor for the journal on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technology (formerly UbiComp).
His research explores the interdisciplinary relationship of machine learning and signal/image processing with the fields of security, mobile health, education, psycho-visual psychology, human-computer interaction, and ubiquitous computing. Like most academics, he has a passion for teaching and mentoring, and views research as an ideal opportunity to instruct the next generation of computer scientists and engineers. He is in a unique role, supporting cyber-security, education, healthcare, and sustainability applications via the integration of machine learning and ubiquitous sensing, and has become increasingly interested in sensing markers of health and context awareness using commonplace sensors. His research supports many healthcare, educational, and security initiatives by creating applications that (1) manage and diagnose many chronic/infectious ailments, (2) help learners master educational topics, and (3) investigate information leakage in pervasive and mobile devices. His dissertation research has also had impact in the area of sustainable resource usage, where he created algorithms for monitoring water, gas, and electricity usage using machine learning (now a commercial product).
His work has also helped to develop applications for real time cognitive load monitoring, privacy implications of smartphones, newborn jaundice screening, and lung function measurement, among others. These projects have resulted in eight patents of which six have been commercialized by various companies including Google. He has secured over $6 million dollars in federal and corporate funding that support these various initiatives. Dr. Larson has published one textbook and disseminated his research in over 50 peer-reviewed conference and journal papers, garnering more than 3700 citations. He received received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington where he was an Intel Science and Technology fellow. At UW, he was co-advised by MacArthur Genius Fellow Shwetak Patel and IEEE Fellow Les Atlas. He also has an MS in Image Processing from Oklahoma State University, where he was advised by Damon Chandler.
When asked what motivates his work, he replied, “In my work, I hope to bridge the gap between evaluation techniques from human computer interaction and machine learning research and evaluation. Too often machine learning researchers do not appropriately scope their evaluation or use iterative HCI techniques in the design of the system. Through intersecting the research in these areas, I hope to help human subjects research become more computationally technical (in terms of the modeling performed) as well as helping to assist machine learning research in becoming more adaptive and rigorous in its application.”
When he is not working, he is spending time with his wife and three wonderful children, including bike riding, making home improvements, and drinking copious amounts of coffee.
To read more about the Hunt Institute’s work to develop future-focused solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, please clickhere. For the latest news on the Hunt Institute, follow our social media accounts on LinkedIn,Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We invite you to listen to our Podcast calledSages & Seekers. If you are considering engaging with the institute, you candonate, orsign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.
Hunt Institute Seminar Series was proud to host Tynesia Boyea-Robinson, author of JUST CHANGE: HOW TO COLLABORATE FOR LASTING IMPACT, this week during our Seminar Series. In her book, Just Change: How To Collaborate For Lasting Impact, Boyea-Robinson shares her experience investing in cities and leaders across the country. The goal of Just Change is to help readers understand what’s working, what’s not working and why in order to improve their own communities.
Attendees arrived at the Institute despite the cold and rain and quickly filled the room with conversation, networking with colleagues and meeting new friends in the social impact space. The talk focused on the collaborative best practices Boyea-Robinson writes about in her book based on her extensive experience. The room was energized with her passion as she engaged the audience telling her story, showing up, and being transparent.
Tynesia has been a featured speaker for a broad array of audiences including South by Southwest and the White House Council for Community Solutions. She has published several articles, which have been featured in the Washington Post, Forbes and in Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity. Her work was also highlighted in the New York Times bestseller A Year Up as well as in the Harvard Business School case study Year Up: A Social Entrepreneur Builds High Performance. She serves on numerous boards and committees and recently accepted an appointment in the Hunt Institute as a Fellow.
She opened with this powerful statement, “I believe our country’s intractable problems are solvable because I meet leaders every day who are solving them. Just Change will help you learn from these leaders so you can have lasting impact in your community.” Her primary focus hovered on the outcomes portion of the material on system based changes applied to social sector work. Visit our YouTube channel for a recording of the presentation.
Left to right: Tristan Knotts, Kim Strelke, Sara Langone, Wendy Alyea
At the end of the talk, Anna Clark, co-founder of the Inclusive Economy at the Institute, facilitated an interactive Q&A. Various members of the audience participated and joined the conversation about how to bring about lasting impact. Afterwards, Boyea-Robinson autographed copies of her book and interacted personally with attendees. Student analysts, interns, and volunteers of the Institute helped host the event then joined the diverse group of attendees discussing their research and listening to lively discussions about various areas of need in the social impact space.
The Hunt Institute Seminar Series features speakers that are actively involved in making lasting impact in resilient infrastructure, sustainable food systems, and inclusive economy. Tynesia Boyea-Robinson is President and CEO of Reliance Methods. Boyea-Robinson’s experience as an entrepreneur, Six Sigma blackbelt, and technologist uniquely positions her to catalyze a results-driven era of social change. In her previous role as Chief Impact Officer of Living Cities, Tynesia was responsible for ensuring $100M of investment produced outcomes that improved the lives of low income people across the country.
In 2011, Boyea-Robinson founded Reliance Methods to help Fortune 500 clients like the Carlyle Group, Marriott, and others change the way the world does business. Tynesia has been leading and writing about enterprises that “do well and do good” for over a decade. As President and CEO of Reliance Methods, she continues to demonstrate how business and community goals can powerfully align towards mutual outcomes.
The next Hunt Institute Seminar in the Series will be held in the spring semester of 2018. Like our FaceBook page to follow us and set your notifications for events to feed into your news feed.
Contributors to this blog article: Ms Boyea-Robinson, Corrie Harris, Maggie Inhofe, and Kim Strelke.
“Evie” is an evolution of our Greenhouse for Good research project that began in 2016. When we found her, she was an old Shasta, forgotten and in disrepair. Evie was reborn on March 31, 2017 as a completely retrofitted mobile greenhouse.
Now, Evie joins the Hunt Institute and Lyle School of Engineering as the embodiment of our interdisciplinary approach to student-led research and innovations in urban agriculture that we hope will impact for good.
The Hunt Institute is joining with Big Tex Urban Farms to debut Evie at Earth Day TX 2017. As a result, the Texas State Fair asked the Hunt Institute to exhibit Evie at the Fair opening September 28, 2017 running until October 21, 2017.
PHASE I was completed in time for Earth Day TX 2017. It consisted of retrofitting the trailer and converting it into a mobile greenhouse. Over the summer, the plants inside were unable to live due to water issues. The take-away for the design team was to incorporate automated systems into Phase II that will control the watering of the plants.
PHASE II begins Fall of 2017 at the Hunt Institute in Lyle School of Engineering. This phase is focused on optimization of the cooling system, watering system, and interior growing systems.
For the cooling research, a Senior Design team of interdisciplinary engineers are working on using absorption refrigeration cycle for cooling which is more energy efficient than the standard A.C. unit.
For the growing research, students are problem solving the issues facing urban agriculture like growing space, water usage, and soil constraints. Evie is an educational trailer so we are working to represent different types of growing systems that solve the problem of these constraints. We will also address mobility (stabilizing the systems inside for movement) and automated watering to reduce labor intensity or time required for maintenance.
Tynesia Boyea-Robinson is a Hunt Institute Fellow, the President and CEO of CapEQ, and an Executive Board Member for Big Thought. Boyea-Robinson exemplifies cross-sector leadership with extensive experience in consulting on impact investment. She has a desire to collaborate with Dr. Eva Csaky in mentoring students involved in research in the inclusive economy and can be seen working in the Institute readily available for our team.
In her book, Just Change: How To Collaborate For Lasting Impact, Tynesia shares her experience investing in cities and leaders across the country. The goal of Just Change is to help readers understand what’s working, what’s not working, and why in order to improve their own communities. Boyea-Robinson’s experience as an entrepreneur, Six Sigma blackbelt, and technologist uniquely positions her to catalyze a results-driven era of social change. In her previous role as Chief Impact Officer of Living Cities, she was responsible for ensuring $100M of investment produced outcomes that improved the lives of low-income people across the country.
In 2011, Boyea-Robinson founded Reliance Methods to help Fortune 500 clients like the Carlyle Group, Marriott, and others change the way the world does business. Tynesia has been religiously leading and writing about enterprises that “do well and do good” for over a decade. As President and CEO of Reliance Methods, she continues to demonstrate how business and community goals can powerfully align towards mutual outcomes.
Boyea-Robinson relies on her deep experience as a social change agent to advise clients. For example, she leveraged effective cross-sector partnerships to help establish the Social Innovation Fund and the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act. Additionally, as founding Executive Director of Year Up National Capital Region (NCR) she raised $20M, was recognized by President Obama, and supported the organization to ensure thousands of low-income young adults are hired in careers with family sustaining wages.
When asked what motivates her in impact work she replied, “We need to reimagine what is possible for an economic system that helps everyone. Businesses and corporations can and should be a large part of this reimagining—obviously, they are the primary driver of capitalist values and decision making. Capitalism is just a tool to meet an end–we just have to use the tool in the right way.”
Earlier in her career, Boyea-Robinson was a leader within several business units at General Electric. From transforming the entire company to utilize technology for online sales to leading an international mortgage bank acquisition, her experience at GE groomed her to achieve outcomes regardless of industry.
Boyea-Robinson has been a featured speaker for a broad array of audiences including South by Southwest and the White House Council for Community Solutions. She has published several articles, which have been featured in the Washington Post, Forbes and in Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity. Her work was also highlighted in the New York Times bestseller A Year Up as well as in the Harvard Business School case study Year Up: A Social Entrepreneur Builds High Performance. She serves on numerous boards and committees.
Boyea-Robinson received her MBA from Harvard Business School and has a dual degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Duke University. She and her college sweetheart, Keith, are committed to indoctrinating their children, Dylan and Sydney, with, “… a love of Duke basketball and all things geeky and sci-fi.”
To read more about the Hunt Institute’s work to develop future-focused solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, please click here. For the latest news on the Hunt Institute, follow our social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. We invite you to listen to our Podcast called Sages & Seekers. If you are considering engaging with the institute, you can donate, or sign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.
In 2015, the Hunt Institute awarded Dr. Sevinc Sengor a seed grant to pursue research of a biopolymer compound, produced from Rhizobium tropici sp. In 2016, after Dr. Sengor was able to produce substantial evidence supporting its importance, she was awarded an EPA grant to further this research titled “Improving Cost Effectiveness & Stustainability of Agricultural Practices Through Innovative Biopolymer Treatment.”
Dr. Sengor’s research team is comprised of Mahdi Heidarizad, Jesse Hull, Deborah Oyedapo & Dr. Eva Csaky in collaboration with the US Army Corp of Engineers ERDC-EL research team. This team has been undertaking experiments which are carried out in a controlled laboratory environment using tomato plants, with three objectives: (i) to study the impact of the application of biopolymer compound, produced from Rhizobium tropici sp., on the growth of the tomato plants, to be measured based on the quantity and amount of tomatoes harvested, (ii) to measure the sugar and nutrient content of the fruits harvested to compare the nutritional attributes of the treatment and control groups, and (iii) to study the quality of the water circulating in the hydroponic system, to test the degree to which ammonium and other nutrients are removed from the water in the treatment and control groups.
Student Ph.D. Jesse Hull, discussing the research at the expo booth
This project was selected to be presented at the 2017 P3 National Sustainable Design Expo at Tech Connect. The conference and expo’s purpose is to be, “a global technology company. that serves as the critical link in what is often referred to as “the Global Innovation Pipeline” by working to bridge the divide between promising technologies and potential investors. This is done through a series of conferences, with the annual Tech Connect World Innovation Conference and Expo bringing together some of the greatest minds in the physical and life sciences.” The P3 (People, Prosperity, and the Planet) National Sustainable Design Expo (NSDE) was co-located with the Tech Connect Conference, allowing EPA P3 student projects to showcase their innovative ideas for a sustainable future alongside EPA programs, government agencies, and advanced tech companies.”
According to the concluding remarks of Dr. Sengor’s presentation, the hydroponic experiments were carried out with tomato plants using .5% of biopolymer, compared against control. Water quality analysis showed slightly more P absorption by the biopolymer and no difference in others. Analysis of the tomatoes showed ~45% heavier tomatoes with higher sugar content (~18%). Root scan analysis showed larger root volume (~129%), surface area (~75%) and root length (~35%). Finally, the team concluded that further investigation of biopolymer for various crops for reduced fertilizer use with optimum efficiency is needed.
