UGA graduate student wins Singularity University scholarship to
grow food indoors April 30, 2012Print Athens, Ga. - University
of Georgia doctoral student Erico Rolim de Mattos envisions a
world where exploding human populations, global climate change
and land overdevelopment has rendered mankind incapable of
producing enough food to sustain humanity. This scenario is a
very real possibility, and it has captured the minds of
specialists from organizations like NASA and the United Nations.
Mattos has an idea that may help solve the problem, and it
recently won him a $30,000 scholarship to an intensive 10-week
graduate studies program at Singularity University, a Silicon
Valley ideas incubator that seeks to solve the planet's most
pressing challenges using advanced technologies. He proposes the
use of LED lights and advanced computer monitoring systems to
provide artificial light in structures known as vertical farms.
These immense greenhouse-like buildings are dedicated to the
production of indoor food crops.