The Bezos Earth Fund has announced the launch of a new Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein at Imperial College London.
The Center will span seven academic departments, focusing on the development and commercialization of sustainable, affordable, nutritious, and tasty alternative food products. This will include research into cultivated meat, precision fermentation, AI, machine learning, nutrition, bioprocessing, and automation. Engineering biology and biofoundries (where cells effectively become mini factories) will be used to develop and scale up new bio-based processes.
The Center will also encompass several institutes and facilities, including the Center for Synthetic Biology, the Center for Translational Nutrition & Food Research, and SynbiCITE (the UK’s industrial translation center for synthetic biology). These institutes will help with education, translating discoveries into real-world applications, and commercialization.
Over the next five years, the Center will receive $30 million in funding as part of the Bezos Earth Fund’s $100 million commitment to developing sustainable proteins, which in turn is part of a $1 billion commitment to food transformation. The news comes just weeks after it was announced that the first Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein would be established at North Carolina State University, also receiving $30 million.
Advancing global food systems
The Bezos Earth Fund was launched in 2020 by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, with the aim of enabling a just transition to a low-carbon economy. The plan to establish several Bezos Centers for Sustainable Protein was announced in March 2024 by the fund’s Vice Chair, Lauren Sánchez.
Last year, the Bezos Earth Fund partnered with over 40 organizations, including Google and ProVeg International, for a new campaign called Beans is How. The project aims to double legume consumption worldwide by 2028 in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Imperial has the leading-edge research, innovation, partnerships, and convening power to advance global food systems, and we are very excited by the potential of our new Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein,” said Dr. Andrew Steer, President and CEO of the Earth Fund. “The Bezos Earth Fund is proud to support Imperial as the home of our second sustainable protein center. By 2050, the world population will be over 10 billion, so now is the time to rethink the way we produce and consume food. This work will help ensure that our future includes more protein options – and that they taste great, are nutritious, and come at low cost.”
