Associate Professor Beth Ferguson and alumni Eldy Lazaro (MFA, design, ‘20) and Emma Smith (Design student alum) won the Best Paper Award for their project “Eco Materials Library” at the International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces. The symposium was hosted by University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom.

The Eco Materials Library is a collection of eco materials (bioplastic, bio composite, fungal, microbial) both made by students locally and collected from around the world. The project team has set up a materials research lab with ingredients, plant leather dehydrator, mycelium drying oven, and industrial blender for innovative material science experimentation. The team designed a material label system and mentored undergraduate and graduate students to invent their own bio-based materials for the collection.

The project has been supported by the Department of Design Makerspace and The Green Initiative Fund at UC Davis. 

Also in attendance at the symposium were undergraduate design students Faith Arnett and Oliva Bates who presented their BioFoam poster and shared samples from the Eco Materials Library.