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More companies that turn biological materials into consumer products could be coming to Nebraska. With the help of a $15 million, two-year grant from the National Science Foundation announced Tuesday, RuralSTAMINA will support students and startups building businesses that turn ag products into goods like fuels, pharmaceuticals and plastics.
RuralSTAMINA is based at Iowa State University and encompasses about 70 partner organizations across Nebraska and Iowa, including businesses, research institutions and investment groups.
Nicole Buan is a biochemist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which partners with RuralSTAMINA.
“We have people who have more expertise on the business side of things, but they're going to need to work with researchers to know how to support a science business, so that's the kind of thing that RuralSTAMINA will do,” Buan said. “It'll broadly benefit Nebraska's bioeconomy.”
The bioeconomy – which includes all economic partners turning biological materials into secondary consumer goods – is a $4 trillion industry. That could grow to up to $10 trillion in the next 10 years.
RuralSTAMINA’s federal funding has the chance to grow with the industry if it’s successful. Up to $160 million could be available over a 10-year period.
Funding comes from the National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines program. RuralSTAMINA joins 12 other projects in the program’s second cohort. It competed with 71 other proposals.
“This award is very exciting and a testament to the life-changing research our university contributes to Nebraska,” University of Nebraska-Lincoln Interim Chancellor Katherine Ankerson said in a press release. “It reflects our land-grant mission to serve and partner across sectors and with entrepreneurs and innovators to strengthen our state. That includes Northeast and Southeast Community Colleges, which will be key in helping develop the bioeconomy workforce all across our region."
Buan said building the biomanufacturing industry in Nebraska could improve the rural economy.
“Most of those companies contributing to the bioeconomy, globally, are small to medium-sized businesses,” Buan said. “The best way for them to be competitive on the global market is to be closely located with where their feedstocks are produced – which would be this Midwest region.”
Nebraska U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer agrees that keeping manufacturing close could also bring jobs, investment capital and economic growth to rural communities.
“Together, Nebraska and Iowa lead the nation in agricultural production," Fischer said. "Because RuralSTAMINA plays to our region’s strengths, this Engines award will help drive innovation in the bioeconomy and, in turn, provide a boost to our farm economy.”
“What we're hoping to do is to grow small startups that can think of all these different creative ways to use the bio-products that we're producing,” Buan said.
Those goods include papers, vaccine components, textiles – even cell phone parts. Buan has her own startup, now led by a student, called Molecular Trait Evolution.
“We developed technology together in the lab. These are enhanced enzymes for processing grain or soybeans, and it helps to unlock more oil and more sugars that can then be fermented into ethanol or other biofuels and bio-products,” Buan said.
She said many more innovative companies and entrepreneurs have made great strides with the help of RuralSTAMINA, and the federal grant will push those innovations even further.
“A lot of that NSF Engines funding will make it easier to unlock venture capital to support small startup companies,” Buan said. “It's been a multi-year process and partnership between Iowa and Nebraska to make the case for the resources that we're able to bring to bear. It's really important for the federal government to see that there's local support for these federal investments.”