Philip Ross has recently developed a mycelium-based analog to animal hide leather and synthetic foams. This talk will illuminate the challenges of bringing new biological materials into compliance for manufacturing, and a map to rapid global implementation of resource efficient material production using fungi. There will be a mushroom-themed reception at the Mendocino Art Center afterwards.

Philip Ross is an artist, inventor, and scholar whose research is focused on biomaterial design and life support technologies. He is a co-founder and CTO of MycoWorks, a San Francisco start-up that turns mycelium (the threadlike, vegetative part of mushrooms) into leather and other materials – using carbon-neutral, organic, biodegradable and fully sustainable technology.

As an artist, Philip has exhibited work at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, New York’s MoMA, and the Museum of Jurassic Technology among others; as a bioengineering scholar at Stanford University, he’s working to develop an Internet of biological things.

Presented as part of Mendocino County’s 18^th Annual Mushroom, Wine & Beer Festival.