FUNGI

One of my many interests is fungi. Identifying them, finding them, eating them, creating art with them, growing them, and making data-backed projects on them. Below you will see some of the things I have done that are related to fungi/mushrooms. I was an active member of the Mycological Association of Washington DC, and the Mycological Association of Boston when I was living there. I currently work in program development at The Fungi Foundation.

3D Printed Mushroom Growers

I designed and 3D printed growers for artistic purposes to grow oyster mushrooms out of. I did this using a combination of Fusion360 and Blender, and printed on an NXE400 printer. The full process can be read here.

Mapping the Most Observed Fungi Species in Each State (USA)

Just for fun map based on iNaturalist observation data. Hard to escape from turkey tails (Trametes versicolor). Full post (50k views) can be seen here.

Mapping Edible Fungi Diversity

With the purpose of seeing what state is the best to be in as a forager, I set out to make a choropleth map of the distinct species of fungi in each state:

I made this by scraping all the edible species from the Edible Mushrooms Wikipedia article, and then cross-referenced it with all the US observations of that species from GBIF/iNaturalist data, and then ran it through a free online choropleth map maker to visualize the distribution.


This post got #1 top of the day and #1 of the week on Reddit's mycology subbreddit.

Mathematical Modeling Final Paper: Profit Optimization

For my final project/paper for my mathematical modeling/simulations class, I made a team of 4 people with different backgrounds to work on the profitability of a hypothetical mushroom farm

Final MATH385 pape.pdf

UMBC Entrepreneur Idea Competition: Mycosmos

Building upon Paul Stamet's work, Mycosmos is an entrepreneurial venture that I conceptualized and further developed with one other UMBC student, Travis Askins. Mycosmos won top 10 out of 40+ ideas at UMBC's 2018 entrepreneurship "Idea Competition".

Mycosmos.pdf

Morel Photogrammetry: Mushrooms in Meshroom

As a side project, I 3D reconstructed a morel mushroom that I foraged for using my phone camera, Meshroom for 3D reconstruction, Meshmixer for .stl fixing, and Blender for final touches and rendering. More importantly, I used the morel to make a mushroom cream sauce for a pasta dish.

Using the node-based photogrammetry software Meshroom to create a 3D mesh of the morchella esculenta

50 pictures were taken of the specimen. I put it on a pencil and rotated the mushroom rather than the camera

Some images of the final 3D model of the morel using Blender's Cycles render engine

3D Amanita Muscaria

For this project, I referenced botanical drawings of an Amanita Muscaria / Fly Agaric and created a 3D model (full closed and 3D printable as well). I used Blender as the 3D modeling software, and printed it using an NXE400 printer. You can see it on Sketchfab here. 

Senior Capstone Project: Mushroom Module

For my final senior capstone project, I assemble a team of 4 to make a modular system for sustainable food growth. As we are currently designing this, my main goal is to make a semi-autonomous mushroom growing system that can grow Lion's Mane mushrooms. All figures were 3D modeled by me using a combination of Solidworks and Blender. 

Mushroom_Module_Poster.pdf

Interior of the Mushroom Module

After a couple days in the Mushroom Module, blooming oysters

The Mushroom Module during a live demo

The Mushroom Team

Leading a Course at Baltimore Underground Science Space: Cultivation & Art

In Spring of 2019, I was invited to lead a course about mushroom cultivation and all things fungi related. My friend and I developed a way to grow mushrooms using instapots to pasteurize the substrate, and then demonstrated our procedures to a class. We also brought in mushrooms we foraged for and made spore prints with them. Ages ranged from 12-70. 

bugssonline.org-Mushroom Cultivation.pdf

Part of the process of converting old grass clippings + used coffee grounds into usable substrate for cultivating oyster mushrooms

Showing the different substrates that can be used to grow simple mushrooms (paper, ramen, old grass)

Spore prints with the mushrooms foraged for that morning