Mycora

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  Working of Mycora

Mycora was inspired by the extreme climate conditions I’ve seen in my own environment, where intense heat hardens the ground and sudden monsoon rains lead to flash flooding that damages roads, bridges, and other infrastructure. I wanted to find a way to detect early structural damage in a more sustainable way, without relying on batteries or electronic sensors that create waste and often fail in remote areas.

While exploring possible solutions, I learned about how plants survive in harsh environments. I was especially inspired by how trees experience xylem cavitation under stress and how their root systems are connected through underground mycorrhizal networks. This made me think about whether nature itself could be used as a communication system for infrastructure health monitoring.

I built Mycora as a conceptual bio-hybrid system that combines microfluidic materials with biological signaling pathways. The idea is that small structural changes in infrastructure trigger fluid-based physical responses that are then converted into natural signals picked up by nearby plant root systems. These signals can travel through underground fungal networks to a central “gateway” tree that can alert maintenance teams.

The biggest challenge was simplifying complex biological and physical processes into a system that is still realistic and understandable. It was also difficult to balance scientific accuracy with a design that could actually be imagined as deployable. I spent time refining the idea so it stayed grounded in real plant biology while still being innovative enough to solve a real-world infrastructure problem.

Through this project, I learned how powerful nature’s own systems are when it comes to sensing, communication, and resilience. It changed how I think about engineering, showing me that some of the most advanced solutions might already exist in ecosystems around us.

Built With

• google