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Vancouver students win more awards for discovering bacteria that destroys polluting plastics

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Two young Vancouver students who discovered bacteria capable of destroying plastics have been awarded five more prizes by The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

The latest awards for Miranda Wang, 22, and Jeanny Yao, 21, announced last week by the Ivy League university’s business school, bring to $90,000 the pair have won in 22 entrepreneurship contests for their discovery of how to safely break down polluting plastics.

The two former Magee Secondary School students have already parlayed their discovery into a new company, BioCellection, which has two provisional patents and has received more than $300,000 in investor funding. Wang has just finished a degrees in cellular biology, while Yao has just earned a biotechnology degree. 

Wang and Yao have become so successful that they are moving their company to California’s Silicon Valley to tap into a larger pool of research and development resources.

“Our technology is the first in the world that can break down plastics at a scalable industrial level,” Wang said Wednesday.

Wang and Yao made the promising discovery in 2012 when as Grade 12 students they found bacteria in the Fraser River that could eat plastics. They focused on phthalates, a fossil fuel-based additive and known carcinogen found in some plastics. With assistance from University of B.C. professor Lindsay Eltis, they isolated 14 different strains of bacteria they found at the Vancouver landfill and the Reifel Bird Sanctuary and then cultured several to feed on a phthalate-enriched diet. They discovered they could get the bacteria to target the chemical to the exclusion of other food sources. 

Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao, science fair winners, at TED2013: The Young, The Wise, The Undiscovered. Wednesday, February 27, 2013, Long Beach, CA. MUST CREDIT Photo: James Duncan Davidson [PNG Merlin Archive]

Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao at TED2013: The Young, The Wise, The Undiscovered. 

The discovery offered the first hint at an environmentally friendly way of getting rid of a major pollution source. Each year more than 12 million tonnes of plastics are dumped into oceans, where they end up in the food chain and kill wildlife. It also won them an invitation to talk about their discovery at the TED — Technology, Entertainment and Design — conference in California in 2013. 

Wang said she and Yao and three friends have now moved on to breaking down more difficult plastics, particularly polystyrene, for which there is no significant recycling solution. BioCellection’s technology, using genetically modified bacteria, dissolves the ubiquitous packing material into carbon dioxide and water. Another technology they are working on will allow plastics to be “upcycled” into more valuable components that can be used in the textile industry, she said.

Last month, Wharton School announced that BioCellection, formed last year by Wang and Yao, was the first in the history of the Wharton Business Plan Competition to win five awards. Yao just graduated from the University of Toronto, along with another team member, Daniel Chapman. Wang and two other members of the five-member team are University of Pennsylvania students.

In addition to the $30,000 Perlman Grand Prize, the crew won the $10,000 Wharton Social Impact Prize, the $10,000 Gloeckner Undergraduate Award, the $43,000 Michelson People’s Choice Award, and the $1,000 Committee Award for Most ‘Wow Factor’. They had also previously won $36,000 in other university competitions.

“We’ve basically won every competition on the campus,” Wang said.

BioCellection’s bacterial products are about two years away from becoming commercially available, she said.


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