Silvis Materials Awarded $1 Million NSF SBIR Phase II Grant to Reduce Emissions in Packaging and Building Industries
Summary
These innovative products are set to revolutionize packaging and building industries by helping manufacturers achieve ambitious goals: reducing emissions by 10-30% and displacing petroleum-based materials by up to 100% by 2030.This award allows Silvis to advance its mission to help customers meet increasingly demanding regulatory pressures to replace petroleum-based binders with bio-based alternatives. Silvis sustainable, biodegradable, and renewable binders help enable commercial manufacturers to transition to green materials, comply with regulatory restrictions, and eliminate petroleuma nonrenewable resource that contributes significantly to GHG emissions.Ferreira, the PI for the grant, is a patented plastics engineer and MIT Sloan graduate who has already invented and patented a breakthrough, recyclable plastic for automotive packaging. She has brought Silvis up from concept to its first proof-of-concept binders and has hired an elite team of scientists and entrepreneurs to invent a platform of formulations for various markets, resulting in the filing of the first provisional patent in August 2024. Silvis also touts a Chief Sustainability Officer, Kim Hedberg, whose background in environmental science and business helps direct strategy and fundraising at Silvis.Silvis is a graduate of the NSF I-Corps program, and has participated in several prestigious accelerators, including Techstars (2022), Plug and Play (2021), Suzano Cycle Momentum (2023), and USRIA (2024).Silvis operates from its private lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where CTO, Dr. Dhrubo Laskar, and Dr. Chi-Linh Do-Thanh are developing sustainable binders using an all-green process. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article.