Biological engineers combine a passion for life sciences with engineering principles to help solve problems faced by living organisms, like animals, plants and microbes. They do so by designing machines, structures, processes and instrumentation. For example, they design medical devices and can modify bacteria to produce fuel.

Biological engineers are working on ways to have cost-and energy-effective biodegradable plastic. Some engineers have been able to produce water bottles from algae, while others have made flexible packaging from crab shells and trees or from mushrooms (specifically the mycelium of mushrooms). Don’t remember what mycelia are? Think back of your grade 11 biology course where you studied the structure of fungi. Mycelia are basically mushroom roots!