Garden Grants - Protein Engineering

Garden Grants - Protein Engineering

Funder: Homeworld Collective Inc

Program Status: 2024 cohort funded; next cycle TBD

Geographic Scope: International (16 funded projects across 6 countries)

Focus Areas:

Protein engineering applied to climate sustainability

Direct air capture (carbonic anhydrase)

Plastics degradation and upcycling

Biomanufacturing and industrial biotech

Carbon dioxide removal

Enhanced rock weathering

Photosynthesis improvement

Biofuels and renewable energy

Bioremediation

Food/agriculture innovation

Program Philosophy:
Garden Grants is a fieldbuilding program inspired by Y Combinator and Fast Grants models. It separates grant proposals into public problem statements and private solution statements to stimulate community knowledge, discourse, and collaboration while protecting intellectual property.

Key Features:

Fast turnaround: announcement to funding decision in ~10 weeks

Transparent review process with detailed feedback for all applicants

Yearlong cohort program with structured meetings, mentorship, and networking

Collaborative problem identification and research community engagement

Emphasis on de-risking ambitious, translational ideas

Eligibility:

Early-stage research at the translational intersection of protein engineering and sustainability

Projects must address identified climate or sustainability challenges

Teams should demonstrate courage, clarity of problem statement, and innovation in proposed solutions

What They Fund:

Early-stage experimental validation

"Big if true" ideas that need de-risking

First experiments to prove feasibility

Ambitious translational research

What They Don't Fund:
Not explicitly stated, but implied exclusions based on program focus:

Non-climate related protein engineering

Late-stage commercialization projects

Projects without clear climate/sustainability impact

Contact: grants@homeworld.bio

Website: https://www.homeworld.bio/grants-protein-engineering/

2024 Funded Cohort (16 projects):

Ahmed Badran (Scripps Research Institute) - RuBisCO enzyme engineering for CO2 capture

Anum Glasgow (Columbia University) - Engineered nutritional yeasts for cell-based meals

Benjamin Scott (University of Saskatchewan) - Enzymes for sustainable fertilizer

César Ramírez-Sarmiento (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) - PET plastic upcycling

Jenny Molloy (ICGEB) - Carbonic anhydrase immobilization for DAC

Logan Morton (Tufts University) - Renewable silk filtration systems

Manvitha Ponnapati (Cambridge, MA) - Ultrastable carbonic anhydrase variants

Maria Astolfi (Berkeley, CA) - Enhanced P450s for biomanufacturing

Mijndert van der Spek (Heriot-Watt University) - CALORIE-DAC

Nathan Ennist (University of Washington) - De novo protein design for solar fuels

Pascal Notin (Harvard Medical School) - Deep learning designed carbonic anhydrase

Philip Romero (University of Wisconsin) - Silicase enzymes for carbon-sequestering agriculture

Pranam Chatterjee (Duke University) - Metal-binding proteins for bioremediation

Samuel Thompson (Stanford University) - Proteins for biofuel production in organic solvents

Shiqiang Gao (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg) - CO2 uptake and water retention

Sonja Salmon (North Carolina State University) - Better carbonic anhydrase design