My name is Orlando Rojas. I'm the director of the BioProducts Institute. We are engaged in many,
many different activities. This is what Xun does. What she does is extract
from birch bark, which becomes material that is crystallized, it’s called betulin,
and that betulin is used to create foams that can become hydrophobic or water
resistant and also fire retardant. Here we are working with
something called chitin. So chitin is a material that we extracted
from the sea creatures like the crab. An
d after the purification
we got this white powder. It's called a hydrogel. So it's almost like science fiction. It is something that is kind of
transparent, has a lot of water. These are very nice materials that can be used for creating lightweight materials. You need to have a combination
of different skills. We have people working in biology,
polymer science, materials science, forests, and even physics. There is an appetite to contribute
in society to the better of the planet.
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