Ecotech: UF researchers help launch a new field to turn nature's solutions into innovative technology

A proposed new field of technology has emerged inspired by nature’s ecosystems.   

In a recent publication in Science Advances, a team of transdisciplinary international researchers, including researchers from the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS), Nature Coast Biological Station (NCBS), Soil, Water, and Ecosystem Sciences and Physics departments, define and formalize ecosystem technology or “ecotech” for short.  

The team believes ecotech could reshape how industries approach climate and environmental challenges as pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss become more complex and interconnected. 

“Ecotech picks up where biotech ends,” says second author Marc Hensel, UF/IFAS NCBS research assistant professor. “It’s inspired not just by processes happening inside of the body like biotech, but by outward–interactions between species and their environment, between populations, communities, and entire ecosystems.” 

At the heart of the research is a simple but ambitious idea: a broader, systems‑level view to generate innovation across sometimes vastly different research fields.  

Ecotech brings together ecology, engineering and earth science to design technologies that work with, rather than degrade, natural systems.  

Thomas Angelini, co-author and UF professor of physics believes that it, "will create new and innovative solutions developed across disciplines for biologists, chemists, physicists and many others to apply their knowledge in collaboration with ecologists, hydrologists, and civil engineers.”  

“An oyster reef is a great example of how ecosystems work naturally,” says Hensel. “It buffers storms, filters water, fuels fisheries, and recruits its own next generation using sound and chemistry.”  

Hensel provides an illustrative ecotech approach to an offshore wind farm design. He explains this would draw on those natural principles in a way that benefits entire ecosystems and humans. 

“Take for example a 3D-printed turbine base that supports reef-forming species, with pipes to provide reef soundscapes and attract larvae, biodegradable water quality sensors, and monitoring and tracking of fish, sea turtles, or marine mammals,” he explains. “Now we have an energy farm that also builds and sustains an ecosystem.” 

Ecotech Economics
Highly influenced by the multitrillion-dollar global sector of biotechnology, future proven ecosystem technologies could provide opportunities to create new industries, jobs and develop new markets. 

“It’s a projected ripple-effect,” Hensel says. “Unlocking these co-benefits requires public and private investment, policy, and collaborations between universities, governments, and industry.” 

With the recently announced UF/IFAS Office of Strategic Partnerships & Innovation, Hensel believes the University of Florida is positioned to be the leader in ecotech given the state’s geography, climate and unique ecosystems. 

“We have some of the most diverse and productive ecosystems on the planet, and the intellectual and economic innovation to get a massive head start,” Hensel says. “From marshes and springs to vast agricultural landscapes, Florida is a natural potential engine for ecotech innovation.” 

Teams at UF are already primed to begin developing the sub-disciplines that are bound to emerge from the larger ecotech umbrella.  

Angelini adds that “the formation of a UF-led program focused on Ecological Materials and Materials Ecology would leverage current UF expertise and broadly support larger-scale ecotech initiatives.”  

The first institutions to strongly invest in ecotech should see significant benefits, according to lead author Brian Silliman, professor of Marine Conservation at Duke University and former UF biology professor.  

“Ecotech can become for states and universities what biotech became for Massachusetts and MIT. It can help improve almost any industry, from agriculture, to urban planning, to manufacturing, to national defense, to health care,” Silliman says.