Biodesign Challenge

Organization Overview

Biodesign Challenge (BDC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit education organization and competition that invites students to envision, create, and critique ways of using biotechnologies to build a future where humans function in harmony with the natural environment. To find these solutions, BDC empowers high school and college students from across disciplinary, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds to become thinkers who are fluent in biotechnology and who design for humans, industry, and the living environment.

BDC’s Mission

• Interdisciplinary Collaboration: To promote learning across art, design, and life sciences by building interdisciplinary educational platforms and curricula in colleges and high schools. And to facilitate community-level research and project collaborations across art, design, tech and life sciences for both scientists and nonscientists 
• Ethics in Innovation: To create a forum for conversation and exchange about the implications of biotech through the promotion and exhibition of multidisciplinary projects  
• Equity and Access: To open new pathways and opportunities in biotech and design for typically underrepresented students
• Sustainability: To introduce designers to biology-based processes and materials that support human and planetary wellbeing