Arborea, based in Imperial College’s White City innovation hub, has been featured in the Financial Times.

Arborea, founded by Julian Melchiorri, has created Exhale, a large bionic chandelier composed of 70 delicately veined plastic leaves contain green microalgae, whose photosynthesis absorbs carbon dioxide from the air and releases oxygen. Hanging in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Exhale is the first living addition to the museums permanent collection. Exhale is an object of remarkable beauty that symbolises a growing synthesis of art and bioscience.

Arborea has already won grants from the government’s Innovate UK research agency, the EU’s Climate-KIC initiative and SynbiCITE, the synthetic biology centre at Imperial College. The next step, Melchiorri says, will be to raise several million pounds from investors in an initial venture financing round in 2018. The full article is available here