Now, a joint-development deal with Swedish retailer H&M Group to create low-carbon flooring that could be used in its new stores or to retrofit older shops, shows the outlines of the Research Triangle Park, N.C.-based startups future at a time when more corporations are paying attention to sustainability goals.

While working as an architecture professor at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, she set up a lab in a spare room to try and grow bio-based concrete.

In an image made with a scanning electron microscope (at 425 times larger than life), calcium carbonate-emitting microorganisms bind to aggregates to form the structure of Biomason's material.

With a number of potential customers in Europe in addition to H&M Group, Biomason is now in discussions with a partner that it declines to name about opening a manufacturing facility on the Continent later this year.

Biomason worked with the federal governments Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on an underwater cement that continues to take CO2 from the sea water and to grow over time.