Bio
Recently described as a polymath (and a fairy) by Tom Reilly, TED’s Community Director, at this year’s TEDGlobal Oxford conference, Rachel’s extensive interdisciplinary practice engages with a fundamental driving principle – the fundamental creativity of science. Her work uses all manners of media to engage audiences and bring them into contact with the latest advances in science and their real potential through the inventive applications of technology, to address some of the biggest problems facing the world today.
Rachel’s research is about the development of new (green) materials that are programmable, environmentally responsive and have some of the properties of living systems. Although it is at an early stage of development, the research prompts a revaluation of how we think about our homes and cities and raises questions about sustainable development of the built environment. The new materials that she is actively developing in collaboration with international scientists and architects have the
potential to form a kind of material language between the built environment and nature. It is proposed that if they are situated on the surface of our buildings, it may be possible to fix carbon and ultimately, directly combat climate change.
Rachel is currently working to develop an active coating for buildings called ‘Biolime’ that can fix carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into a limestone-like solid form, or carbonate. Rachel views the development of this product as being the first steps towards engaging practitioners of the built environment in the possibility of carbon capture and storage technologies at the major site of its production – our cities.
