UMBC professor to make scratch growing chickens

Sarah Gantz

Reporter- Baltimore Business Journal

Mark Marten, a chemical and biochemical engineering professor at UMBC, is using his background in fermentation to develop a new way to raise chickens that is safer and less expensive. What’s more the technology, which entails attempting to alter how microorganisms in animals interact, could be a gateway to addressing other health conditions, such as obesity.

“I grow fungus. Nobody cares about fungus, that’s gross,” Marten said. “Using fungi for a great benefit — that’s kind of a cool thing.”

Marten’s company, MycoInnovation, is developing an additive for chicken feed that could be used to make chickens grow without antibiotics.

In a matter of months, Marten has grown MycoInnovation from an idea to a grant-funded company that is in the process of inking a deal with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to test his technology. Marten launched the company in December after participating in a National Science Foundation grant program, Innovation Corps, which targets university faculty to develop companies based on their research.

In March, the company received $100,000 from the Maryland Innovation Initiative, a state program that supports businesses started out of university research, and is hoping to land additional funding through a National Science Foundation grant. The partnership with the USDA would take Marten’s research out of his lab at UMBC and into the chicken coop, where he could start testing whether his methods for fattening up chickens without the harmful side effects of antibiotics is a winner.

Antibiotics are commonly used in chicken feed because they can cause chickens to get bigger while consuming less food. But the antibiotics can cause bacteria strains that are harmful to humans. Marten wants to use a fermentation process to produce large quantities of peptides, or small proteins, that could have the same chicken-growing effect without the bacteria problems.

The type of progress experienced by MycroInnovation usually takes two or three years for a life science company, said David Fink, director of entrepreneurial services at bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park and an advisor to MycoInnovation. Fink attributed MycoInnovation’s fast-paced growth to Marten’s willingness to adjust his idea to fit market needs. Fink said he often finds that scientists do not want to compromise their research in the interest of making a company that is more in line with a demand.

“That’s the biggest hurdle they need to overcome,” Fink said. “If they’re going to build a business they need a business model that can pay for itself.”

Marten’s original idea was to create an alternative to antibiotics that would improve animal health, Fink said. But when he learned the purpose of the antibiotics was to make them grow bigger — not to keep them healthy — he changed direction to come up with an alternative that would stimulate growth.

“You have to be able to move with what you discover, to change your project so it fits into the needs of what people really want,” Fink said.

Agriculture technology is still a small sector of the bioscience industry. Agriculture feedstock and chemicals made up just 5 percent of the industry workforce in 2010 and had little growth between 2001 and 2010, according to a 2012 report by the Biotechnology Industry Organization and Battelle.

The global agriculture biotechnology industry was expected to reach a value of $12 billion by 2015, according to a Janary 2013 report by Transparency Market Research.

But public interest in the field is growing, as farmers look for ways to grow food while saving money and new uses for the technology come to light. For example, the method Marten thinks he can manipulate microbes to make chickens gain weight could boost research on human weight loss.

“The micro biome is inside everything — you and me and chickens,” Marten said. “There are literally thousands and thousands of different species of microbes that help us digest food, keep us healthy, but we don’t understand all there is.”

Happy Arbor Day! This week, volunteers from AKA Sorority, Professional Staff Senate, Parks & People Foundation, UMBC Landscape and Grounds came together to plant several trees on campus! 

The donated trees included Eastern Red Buds and Tulip Poplars which will host some lovely blossoms!

They were planted between our new rain garden and and our new parking lot with pervious pavers, that helps to absorb rain water and allow it to filter into the ground, rather than causing erosion and run off into the Patapsco River & Chesapeake Bay

Whilst the term “flat design” might not be a phrase you’re yet familiar with, you will definitely have noticed the concept and the design features whilst browsing the internet.

For those of you that have noticed an increase in the “drop shadow” trend in web design, the easiest way to describe flat design is to say it’s the opposite of that. Flat design is designing a website that has left behind the drop shadow and the 3D effects, and that is by all intents and purposes flat.

Flat design looks modern, fun, fresh and refreshingly simple compared to it’s 3D counterpart. Flat design is embracing the use of solid colors, sharp, well-defined typography and bold shapes. It takes away any faff and fussiness from the design making it so much easier to digest and to navigate. It’s modern and is without a doubt going to be a huge design trend this coming year.

How can you use flat design? 

For me, the top selling point of flat design is the simplicity and minimalism of it. That’s not to say you need to have a simple product or minimalist brand to use this trend to your advantage. I actually like the way this trend could modernize a relatively complex or old-fashioned niche, making the information on your site easier for readers to take in and understand.

Of course, the simplicity of flat design makes it so much easier to optimize for different devices too which is another point in its favor.

We all know that mobile browsing is on the rise, and responsive design has already addressed this rise. Flat design makes web design more scalable in a similar way, because when you design with solid colors, rather than a more image based aproach, you’re using less detail and so the information based footprint of your website becomes much smaller. This means it’s quicker to load and communicates faster with whatever platform your reader is using to view it on.

Where have you seen it before? 

Flat design isn’t exactly new. You’ll actually notice that brands such as Microsoft had already embraced the trend a few years back, while other big brands such as Apple were too busy perfecting other techniques.

Looking back to 2007, a quick glance at the Microsoft Zune – and you can already see that clean, typography based interface taking shape. At the time it went relatively unnoticed, being overshadowed by bigger industry developments, but in 2013 it is definitely at the forefront of design trends.

Have you embraced flat design? Is flat design being over-used? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Whilst the term “flat design” might not be a phrase you’re yet familiar with, you will definitely have noticed the concept and the design features whilst browsing the internet.

For those of you that have noticed an increase in the “drop shadow” trend in web design, the easiest way to describe flat design is to say it’s the opposite of that. Flat design is designing a website that has left behind the drop shadow and the 3D effects, and that is by all intents and purposes flat.

Flat design looks modern, fun, fresh and refreshingly simple compared to it’s 3D counterpart. Flat design is embracing the use of solid colors, sharp, well-defined typography and bold shapes. It takes away any faff and fussiness from the design making it so much easier to digest and to navigate. It’s modern and is without a doubt going to be a huge design trend this coming year.

How can you use flat design? 

For me, the top selling point of flat design is the simplicity and minimalism of it. That’s not to say you need to have a simple product or minimalist brand to use this trend to your advantage. I actually like the way this trend could modernize a relatively complex or old-fashioned niche, making the information on your site easier for readers to take in and understand.

Of course, the simplicity of flat design makes it so much easier to optimize for different devices too which is another point in its favor.

We all know that mobile browsing is on the rise, and responsive design has already addressed this rise. Flat design makes web design more scalable in a similar way, because when you design with solid colors, rather than a more image based aproach, you’re using less detail and so the information based footprint of your website becomes much smaller. This means it’s quicker to load and communicates faster with whatever platform your reader is using to view it on.

Where have you seen it before? 

Flat design isn’t exactly new. You’ll actually notice that brands such as Microsoft had already embraced the trend a few years back, while other big brands such as Apple were too busy perfecting other techniques.

Looking back to 2007, a quick glance at the Microsoft Zune – and you can already see that clean, typography based interface taking shape. At the time it went relatively unnoticed, being overshadowed by bigger industry developments, but in 2013 it is definitely at the forefront of design trends.

Have you embraced flat design? Is flat design being over-used? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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