During a trip to San Diego, where Stephen was presenting his work on signal peptides and N-glycosylation in E .coli at the 7th International Conference on Biomolecular Engineering, we were hosted by Professor Stephen Mayfield at UCSD for the afternoon. We were lucky enough to see some of his innovative algal products, including a miniature version of his surf board photographed here (the real life ones are currently being trialled across the globe by elite surfers). Algal biomass cultivated in Steve's lab is being chemically converted to polyurethane's for use in the surf board manufacturing process.
