Making Batteries From Fungi With Jens Sørensen

Jens Laurids Sørensen from Aalborg University, the winner of the Future is Fungi Research Award, introduced the winning project to create the world's first biosynthesized battery.

Sørensen said: "Our battery is based on pigments from fungi. So it's the world's first biosynthesized-battery. It is much better than the solutions right now, which are based on mining different metal ions or chemical synthesis based on compounds or chemicals from the oil industry."

He said it will likely take around five years for the project to grow from a laboratory setting to the real world, but with vast funding, this could be accelerated significantly.

"To also honour the research, we wanted to have the award for uncovering this. We wanted to thoroughly uncover the new-frontier ways we can use fungi for elemental solutions. We want to inspire more research and innovation in this space, and also to commercialise more of this research, get this research off the ground," said Susanne Gløersen, the organiser of the award.