The Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has named the founders of Ecovative Design the 2025 recipients of the William F. Glaser ’53 Entrepreneur of the Year award. The honorees, Eben Bayer ’07 and Gavin McIntyre ’07, will be recognized for pioneering the use of biodegradable mycelium-based materials in construction, fashion, consumer packaging, food and more. 

Established in 1990, the Entrepreneur of the Year award honors Rensselaer graduates who have achieved success as entrepreneurs and now serve as role models for current students and aspiring entrepreneurs. The annual honorees bring the world of entrepreneurship into the classroom by sharing their career experiences with students. 

The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place on Nov. 6 at 1 PM in the EMPAC theater on RPI’s campus. In addition to the awards ceremony and a fireside chat with RPI President Marty Schmidt ’81, the event will include a startup pitch competition and poster presentations by RPI students and faculty. Pitch and poster topics include a wide range of products, from healthcare and e-commerce to energy and space technology. 

“Eben and Gavin epitomize RPI innovation,” said Severino Center director Eric Ledet ‘95, ‘03 Ph.D. “We challenge our students with the simple question, ‘Why not change the world?’ And with their breakthrough mycelium technology, they have done just that. They conceived of an idea and started a company as RPI students that has contributed to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly global economy.” 

Ecovative grew from an RPI Inventor's Studio class with the late Professor Burt Swersey, where Bayer and McIntyre began engineering with mycelium, the root-like structures of fungi. 

 “RPI captured me with its quirky brilliance — computer labs in churches and Monty Python in the newspaper,” Bayer said. “But it was Burt Swersey's Inventor's Studio where everything clicked. Gavin and I didn't know we were birthing a new field of material science; we just wanted to build something meaningful with mycelium." 

The two founded Ecovative shortly after graduation, and built their manufacturing facility in Green Island after winning the €500,000 Dutch Postcode Lottery Green Challenge Competition in 2008. Since then they’ve raised $184 million in funding and added the Swersey Silos — the world’s largest mycelium farm — to the facility. 

Their innovations now power a global mycelium economy, from Loop's mycelium coffins to GOB's mycelium earplugs to MyBacon, a meatless bacon sold by more than 2,500 retailers. Ecovative has also worked with DARPA, the U.S. Space Force, and industries from materials to medicine to advance what's practicable today and possible tomorrow for life on Earth. 

"RPI gave us the freedom to ask 'what if?' in Burt Swersey's class,” McIntyre said. “When Eben and I started growing mycelium in our dorm rooms, we were just following our curiosity about nature's own manufacturing system. That RPI encouraged such wild experimentation — and that it actually worked — still amazes me today." 

Media are welcome to attend.