About Us
About Us
The Agile BioFoundry is a consortium of seven U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories that operate as a distributed biofoundry in collaboration with industry and academia. Funded by DOE’s Alternative Fuels and Feedstocks Office (AFFO), formerly known as the Bioenergy Technologies Office, our work supports AFFO’s goals to advance the industrial production of chemicals. We collaborate with industry and academia to accelerate innovation and adopt new biomanufacturing methods.
Today, the Agile BioFoundry comprises seven national laboratories: Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, National Laboratory of the Rockies, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories.
Our Vision
The Agile BioFoundry delivers tools and technologies that enable reliable,
scalable biosynthesis of products, advancing U.S. leadership for the bioeconomy.
Our Mission
The Agile BioFoundry accelerates the development, integration, and
scale-up of biological engineering tools and technologies, transforming promising
biosynthetic pathways into reliable, industrial-ready production systems.
Our Goals
- Host Engineering: Improve genetic tractability, expand the feedstock range, and develop robust tooling (such as SAGE and CRISPRi) across diverse bacterial, yeast, and fungal hosts to lower process input costs.
- Metabolic Intermediates: Advance strain engineering and bioprocess development for key intermediates like 3-HP, isobutyric acid, and oleochemicals to achieve high titers, rates, and yields (TRY) for industrial adoption.
- Automation, Data, and AI: Deploy automated pipelines, standardized data frameworks, and machine learning models to accelerate closed-loop DBTL cycles and improve predictive scale-up capabilities.
- Strategic Partnerships: Manage industrial collaborations through customer discovery, the Industry Accelerator, and Advisory Board engagement to align ABF research priorities with commercial market needs.
Learn more about collaborating with the Agile BioFoundry.
Our multi-disciplinary team brings together scientists, engineers, and technical staff.
Working together with industry
Our goal is to work with industry to identify and help remove barriers to adopting biomanufacturing technologies.
Our business development and partnerships teams work to expand the number and diversity of our industry partnerships and track the impact of project technologies.
Feedback from our industry stakeholders supports decision-making and project-planning activities among the Agile BioFoundry and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels and Feedstocks Office. We accomplish this via:
- Industry needs assessments
- Marketing and outreach
- Meetings and workshops
- Continuous dialogue with our Advisory Board