\n\t\t\t\t\t\tWe usually don’t think about all the things we touch and interact with every day, whether they’re metal, plastic, or something else. But that’s all a homegrown team of engineers does, as they turn plants into the next generation of tech and things you use every day. All that science happens inside a warehouse in Lake Nona, where the Soarce team creates something they hope changes the way things are made. “Cellulose is the most abundant polymer on the planet,” CEO Derek Staltzman said. “It’s actually found in the majority of biomass; trees, grasses, things like that.” Co-founders Staltzman and Mason Mincey, who’s also chief operating officer, learned about cellulose from books on material science in a library. Soon enough, they consulted the modern library of YouTube, where they connected with a researcher-turned-mentor in Finland. They applied their engineering backgrounds to study what they say is like “the rebar inside of a plant,” which can be eight times stronger than steel. “What we’re doing is that we have a process that allows us to take that, extract it and utilize it in a variety of new products,” Staltzman said. One of those products is like a jelly, called “Seabind” because it can come from seaweed, and they say it can make concrete 30% stronger, to flex instead of crack under pressure, or withstand strong hurricanes. They can also turn that seaweed or grass into coatings for carbon fiber or metals like the ones in your phone or car or boat, and the shoes and clothes in your closet; all to make them lighter, stronger, and more eco-friendly. “I feel like they (the public) should care about something like this because then they could feel a bit more hopeful,” Mincey said. “There actually are viable solutions to take natural resources and use them in true performance application.” The material science industry is recognizing Soarce’s mission to cut toxic chemicals in things we use every day. Forbes recently featured Staltzman, Mincey, and the team in 2026’s “30 Under 30,” and Lake Nona’s Tavistock group has been a longtime partner since their days in the group’s incubator program. “There definitely is something about Orlando or maybe Lake Nona specifically that shows a difference in how they’re building today and how they were building many, many years ago,” Mincey said of what keeps them in Central Florida. The team is also looking to their beginnings as model rocket builders. They’re eyeing the Artemis missions and beyond to see how humans could build in space; they’ve applied to be part of a program officially exploring material science in space. They’ll know if they got the gig in August. “NASA’s looking at a lot of applications where we’re going back to the moon,” Staltzman said. “Can we combine, let’s say moon dust with some sort of nanomaterial and build structures out of it? 3-D print these structures on the actual surface of the moon, which is a pretty nutty idea that we’re looking at.” And while their heads are above the clouds at times, they draw inspiration from the earth under their feet. “At the end of the day, Mother Nature has been the best engineer,” Staltzman said.\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
We usually don’t think about all the things we touch and interact with every day, whether they’re metal, plastic, or something else. But that’s all a homegrown team of engineers does, as they turn plants into the next generation of tech and things you use every day. <\/p>\n