Education
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Community BioFutures
The EBRC Community BioFutures initiative aims to build bioliteracy and engagement in the U.S. bioeconomy by empowering stakeholders and strengthening local bioeconomies through a national networking and resources infrastructure.
About
As the bioeconomy continues to grow and diversify, public engagement, and the development of a robust, inclusive workforce becomes a high priority. To increase engagement and educate the next-generation of bioeconomy participants, we need to raise awareness of its potential, from foundational engineering biology to scalable technologies and consumer-ready products, goods, and services. EBRC will contribute to this initiative by establishing a national infrastructure that supports and connects local bioeconomy stakeholders to increase engineering biology engagement and education, workforce development, and industry/economic growth, promoting nation-wide bioliteracy.
Want to engage with us or get involved? Please reach out to education@ebrc.org
Project Goals, Milestones, and Benchmarks
Project Goals and Milestones
- To meet with educators, researchers, industry members, policymakers, and other stakeholders to identify the strengths of local bioeconomies, their challenges, and the resources necessary for robust networks;
- To facilitate discussions and collaboration between stakeholders by holding national and regional workshops. These workshops will help us to develop tools, platforms, and connections that foster visibility, growth, and sustainability of local bioeconomy networks and national bioliteracy; and
- To gather “Success Stories” about how local bioeconomies serve their communities to build bioliteracy.
Current Benchmarks
- Gathering information (strengths, weaknesses, resources) on local bioeconomy networks through surveys and interviews with EBRC members and near-network community members;
- Engaging with existing engineering biology and bioeconomy-related organizations throughout the U.S. to identify how to best support different bioeconomies (i.e., by exploring organization types, funding sources, participants and target audience, and programs’ goals).
Upcoming Events
Come to our first workshop, held virtually! More details to come.
Resources
Coming soon!
Resources we expect to highlight:
- Publications
- Success Stories!
- Discussion Forum
Steering Committee
Coming Soon! If you are interested in participating in EBRC’s Community BioFutures’ Steering Committee, please contact us at education@ebrc.org
The Community BioFutures steering committee is composed of key stakeholders from industry, education, government, and other relevant sectors to provide strategic guidance and expertise on EBRC’s role in advancing nationwide bioliteracy by:
- Shaping networking workshops to foster collaboration between local bioeconomies;
- Planning regional or local community events (in partnership with museums, zoos, libraries, or similar entities) to increase public engagement; and
- Offer general input to enhance the success of the EBRC Community BioFutures initiative.
Support
This work is currently supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Award Number 2341279. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
