News
Field-to-product integration
Faculty voice: Feeding the future sustainably
In the coming years, agriculture will be called on to feed a growing population, while reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and making better use of increasingly scarce resources. To do this, the current agricultural system must adapt. Bruno Basso discusses his work in this context.
Julia Martien, a fifth-year PhD student in microbiology at UW–Madison, has been named the 2021 winner of the Jennifer L. Reed Bioenergy Science Award. She researches how environmental stressors may shift the metabolism of Zymomonas mobilis to produce higher levels of bioproducts that can be used to make useful chemicals and fuels.
Developing sustainable, low-carbon fuels and industrial products is one of society’s greatest challenges. For the past 14 years, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), based at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has been innovating advances toward a society powered by renewable chemicals and fuels derived from non-food plants.
An extensive review, published by researchers at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center and Wisconsin Energy Institute in the journal Advances in Ecological Research, explores the potential to design agricultural landscapes that support both crop production and biodiversity.
As the climate warms, many scientists and farmers have worried about how rising temperatures will affect agricultural systems and crop yields. Warmer air may increase evaporation and water loss from plants. This has led to concerns that crops will require more water—either from precipitation or irrigation—in a warmer future.
Our graduate students and postdoctoral researchers play an enormous role in the transition to a sustainable, resilient, and affordable energy future that is centered on social and economic equality. From lab experiments to field work to classrooms, these leaders of today and tomorrow are our catalysts for energy discovery.
Cryo-EM, an advanced microscopy technique that utilizes extremely cold temperatures and electron beams to illuminate the structures of some of the tiniest building blocks of life, has come to UW after years of investment — and it could help CALS scientists reach new frontiers in the biosciences
Yiying Xiong, new Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center associate director, has turned this deep connection with the power and potential of renewable energy into more than 20 years of experience in leadership, management, and business development in this area.
Our graduate students and postdoctoral researchers play an enormous role in the transition to a sustainable, resilient, and affordable energy future that is centered on social and economic equality. From lab experiments to field work to classrooms, these leaders of today and tomorrow are our catalysts for energy discovery. In this new series, we learn more about what inspired these talented researchers, what brought them to their field of study, and the questions that drive their work at GLBRC.
GLBRC researcher and University of Wisconsin–Madison biochemistry assistant professor Vatsan Raman describes a new computation-guided method to optimize the design of split protein systems that can be used to monitor and regulate biological activity.
Combining field data with a reference switchgrass genome, a multi-institutional research team has been able to associate climate adaptations with switchgrass biology, information that could be useful toward the DOE’s interest in harnessing the crop toward producing sustainable alternative fuels.
