Every month, during a Coffee Break, we dive into the stories of EIC innovators and get a glimpse of the people behind EIC projects. Today’s guest is Rachel Armstrong, EIC Ambassador, and Professor of Regenerative Architecture at KU Leuven where driven researchers and students are setting the foundations for new markets by bringing together, for the first time, Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology and hydroponics. While our conversation with Rachel at the occasion of the EIC Summit 2025 delved upon the groundbreaking EIC Pathfinder Mi-Hy project, it was also a great opportunity to hear about her dreams for a greener and healthier future, starting off from the home level.
First of all, as professor of regenerative architecture at KU Leuven – coordinating the EIC Mi-Hy project – could you tell us what motivated your research team to apply to the EIC Pathfinder scheme?
Excellent question! I think architecture is very underrepresented in terms of deeptech and I have noticed a huge gap in the technologies of home.
With the expansion of the market, we have lost the importance of the home economy within our everyday lives. For this reason, the kinds of innovations that I have been working on are those situated in the houses that we live in.
The question is: can we actually reinvigorate the idea of economies within our homes and think of those innovations that will allow us to achieve the European ideals while also improving everybody’s daily life? Along this line, I was driven to the EIC because we need other technological platforms other than the machines in our homes if we are to get different impacts.
Working with my amazing colleagues, I used the Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology to help create a circular, sustainable platform turning carbon into biomass and reclaiming nitrogen from wastewater streams. With that genuine circularity, we have then created more and more plug-ins.
One of our aspirations is to create a plug-in that is a solar panel that can take wastewater from a washing machine and turn it into washing powder.
What are the goals of the EIC Mi-Hy project and why is its interdisciplinary approach key to achieving them?
At the level of the home, we are looking at urban farms to try and mitigate against food crises so that our cities will be greener, cleaner and healthier because we will be able to produce food locally.
As for industrial scale hydroponics, the dream would be to go to Almeria and tackle the issue of sea plastic pollution: if we can use local wastewater to feed plants, that would make a really incredible impact on the footprint but also, hopefully, make the food tastier whilst dealing with community waste.
As we are taking an integrated approach, interdisciplinarity is really essential. We need Sony, who have got a real track record in green electronics and their interest in precision gardening really fits with our agenda for hydroponics in homes.
We are working with Yannis Ieropoulos from the University of Southampton, who is an expert in Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC). This includes managing biofilms and creating the performance that we need.
Nitrogen metabolism is the expertise of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). They have all the biotechnology to help us engineer a really special tree root-like biofilm, which would be a real first if we can get that going.
And then we have BioFaction, an SME specialised in science communication.
While it will be great if we can get a really efficient commercialised product, it will be even greater if we can distribute the knowledge so that young people and entrepreneurs are seeing the potential of working through these biosystems to achieve our desired outputs, whether that is healthy food, circular systems or better use of waste.
We want people’s imaginations to go off because it is not just about us, it is about who comes behind us to take the legacy forward.
Six months ago, the Mi-Hy project and CONFETI, another EIC Pathfinder project part of the same EIC portfolio, came together at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, discussing future collaboration opportunities in the field of CO2 and nitrogen valorisation. Which activities are you planning to achieve this and what are your expectations?
If we could work with them forever, it would be a dream! There is great exchange that is going on in terms of looking at the microbial community between University of Barcelona (one of the EIC CONFETI project’s partners) and the Spanish National Research Council (one of our partners at the EIC Mi-Hy project). Being neighbours, they also have shared interests.
In particular, we are trying to increase our microbiological knowledge because we want fungi and different kinds of bacteria, and they have knowledge and equipment and we have got the expertise.
Additionally, they have got a chip that can take 50 channels of information from microbial fuel cells, so now we can make our microbial fuel cells smart by using the chip that CONFETI has developed to really put the microbial fuel cell through its paces.
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You have just concluded your presentation as EIC Ambassador at the flagship event of the EIC Summit 2025. Which takeaways from your experience as EIC beneficiary do you hope to have successfully conveyed?
What I hope to have conveyed is the way that the EIC is tackling challenges that haven’t got simple solutions, by bringing together these diverse communities with different perspectives, different knowledge sets – like us and CONFETI.
We hope that by working together strategically in these next two years, we will actually set the foundations for new markets because the only way we are going to deal with a challenge like carbon-nitrogen valorisation and mitigation is by working collectively.
Carbon and nitrogen are fundamental to life cycles, so we must find lots of different injection points where our technologies are making a difference. We need to be able to support each other in an economy of exchanges. Now, whether that becomes the beginning of a larger marketplace would be my dream.
About Mi-Hy
Mi-Hy, coordinated by the University of Leuven, relies on atmospheric CO2, light, and household wastewater as inputs, aiming to utilize waste streams for CO2 and promote sustainable plant growth. Supported by the EIC Pathfinder, Mi-Hy plans to demonstrate CO2 utilization from microbial reactions and industrial processes while exploring the use of household wastewater for hydroponics.
Learn more about Mi-Hy by visiting the Horizon Europe database and the official project website.
Did you miss the speech of Rachel Armstrong at the EIC Summit 2025? The recording of her testimonial on EIC impact is available here.
DISCLAIMER: This information is provided in the interest of knowledge sharing and should not be interpreted as the official view of the European Commission, or any other organisation.