SPRIND Challenge: Engineering Microbial Consortia

Funding for teams in Europe to develop new kinds of robust, resource-efficient end-to-end biomanufacturing processes for circular and sustainable chemicals and materials through fermentation processes with microbial consortia.

Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen (SPRIND – German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation) acts as a forum between the German government, industry, and research representatives. The main objective of the federal corporation is to support breakthrough innovations.

The SPRIND Challenge Engineering Microbial Consortia supports research with the aim to develop new kinds of robust, resource-efficient end-to-end biomanufacturing processes for circular and sustainable chemicals and materials through fermentation processes with microbial consortia, which are continuously improved through AI-supported Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL) cycles. It is intended to help close material and carbon cycles. Teams should use microbial consortia to build  robust processes that provide consistent, reliable production even under changes in feedstocks, operating conductions or when challenging chemical transformations generate compounds that inhibit the microbes responsible for production. These processes could open new classes of variable, minimally refined feedstocks to biomanufacturing, reduce primary resource use and environmental impacts compared with the strongest credible alternative, and create a step-change in cost competitiveness at large scale. Projects should use measurements and AI/ML to make quantitative predictions, guide experimental decisions, and develop active process control.

The Challenge consists of three Stages:

• During Stage 1, teams will demonstrate consortium-based production and initial product recovery, generate early evidence of consistent performance, and establish the initial measurement, prediction, and process-control capabilities needed for later external robustness evaluations.
• During Stage 2, teams will operate an integrated process, test consistent performance and process control across the project’s designed operating range, and complete the first external robustness evaluation. Accumulated project data must be used to test and, where justified, improve quantitative predictions, experimental decisions, and the process-control approach, together with any claimed use of models to represent or infer relevant process or community states. 
• During Stage 3, teams will operate an integrated process using feedstocks and operating conditions intended for commercial production. They will complete a second external robustness evaluation, validate models, quantitative predictions, and process control using the accumulated project data, establish technoeconomics from measured performance, and produce an engineering sample for customer acceptance testing.

This SPRIND Challenge is funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMUKN) through its digitalisation initiative to close material cycles, part of the action programme implementing Germany’s National Circular Economy Strategy (NCES).