Sparking Student Entrepreneurism

Two North Carolina State University graduate students are making progress in solving key challenges in crop and poultry production, thanks in part to a new N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative award aimed at helping students translate their research ideas into products and services that improve agriculture.

Mabel Barreiro Carpio, in the College of Sciences, and Harry Ervin, in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, won the N.C. PSI’s first-ever Entrepreneurial Graduate Student Support Awards earlier this year.

The $9,000 awards were made possible this year by a gift from Raleigh-based International Farming Corp. to the N.C. PSI Student Fund. The N.C. PSI’s Commercialization Advisory Council, made up of university and industry representatives with expertise in entrepreneurism and agricultural technology, selected Ervin and Barreiro as winners from among 25 award applicants from five NC State colleges.

While Barreiro is developing ways to make the administration of certain veterinary medicines used in poultry production more precise, Ervin is working on ways to use beneficial fungi to create easy-to-use, shelf-stable products that help crops increase their uptake of plant nutrients.

Transforming the Prevention and Treatment of a Costly Poultry Disease

Barreiro, who is pursuing a doctorate in the Department of Chemistry, spent a few years in research and development with the Peruvian veterinary pharmaceutical firm Ilender before coming to NC State in 2023.

Barreiro’s Ph.D. advisers are Joshua Pierce, a chemistry professor and N.C. PSI faculty affiliate, and Yevgeny Brudno of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Lampe Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNC and NC State.

Whether … through a startup, a corporate R&D team, or something in between, I’m driven by the idea of creating tangible, positive impact.

Barreiro’s technology could result in what she calls a “transformative shift” in how farmers prevent and treat coccidiosis, a disease caused by protozoan parasites that costs the global poultry industry billions of dollars annually.

“The technology enables the solubilization of anticoccidial drugs that are traditionally water-insoluble, such as nicarbazin, robenidine, and salinomycin. These compounds are powerful tools in poultry health but are currently limited to feed-based administration due to their low solubility,” Barreiro says.

“By unlocking water solubility, we aim to deliver these drugs through the drinking water system, allowing for precise dosing, reduced cross-contamination at feed mills, improved absorption and greater flexibility for producers to tailor treatments to individual flocks,” she adds.

Barreiro says that winning the N.C. PSI award has helped her pursue her passion for bridging the gap between scientific discovery and practical application.

“It’s exciting to think that something we’re building in the lab today could be solving real problems tomorrow,” she says. “The funding provided through this award enabled proof-of-concept experiments that demonstrated significant improvements in the solubilization of previously water-insoluble drugs.”

With an NC State Ph.D., Barreiro hopes to keep turning science into solutions.

“Whether that’s through a startup, a corporate R&D team, or something in between, I’m driven by the idea of creating tangible, positive impact,” she says.

Using Fungi to Help Crops Make the Most of Organic Fertilizers

Like Barreiro, Ervin is a Ph.D. student with an industry background. He spent three years as a research associate, first at Invaio Sciences and later with Novozymes.

He joined Christine Hawkes’ lab in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology in 2022 as part of the interdisciplinary FunCrops project. The project is designed to harness fungi that live in and around plants to improve crop performance.

The Hawkes Lab has discovered specific fungi that dwell in plant roots that can increase plants’ access to organic nutrient sources such as manure, and Ervin is pursuing ways to create a product derived from these fungi that can be applied by farmers in their fields and greenhouses.

Increased involvement with the entrepreneurial programs at NC State has opened my eyes to the many different facets of starting a business.

“From a business perspective, I hope to validate the product in greenhouse and field trials and make it available to farmers,” he says.

Receiving the N.C. PSI award allowed him to spend the summer months focusing nearly exclusively on the technology he’s developing.

“The award has also provided many great networking opportunities where I have met a wide variety of individuals who have provided advice and guidance,” he says. “And … increased involvement with the entrepreneurial programs at NC State has opened my eyes to the many different facets of starting a business.”

After graduation, Ervin hopes to continue working on his technology or return to industry to pursue other sustainable agricultural solutions.

This post was originally published in Plant Sciences Initiative.