I am thrilled to report that the winning Biodesign Challenge Team coming out of Rutgers is Soil:P the living prescription for all your urban soil needs

Soil:P seeks to identify and support the living communities of microbes in urban soils. Our project was inspired by hands-on work identifying soil microbes in our lab, the State of New Jersey (which has a lot of unused post-industrial spaces), our home city of Camden, and the Biodesign Challenge which encouraged us to consider ways that living systems can support and revitalize urban spaces.

A great video on the project, created by the team’s videographer Ele Whitman can be seen here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o0lz4KPFzS2WgRunRhpdyHMPcERilmS8/view?usp=sharing

According to the team, Soil:P’s Mission and Vision is to provide urban communities access to healthy foods. Our aim is to take responsibility for the life of our soil and by extension, the life of our planet. To this end, we recognize that we humans must play a hands-on part in the revitalization of living systems and/or the realization of new systems in the built environment.