Back in 2010, Jeff Vinokur was a college student with an interest in biofuels when he donned a rhinestone lab coat, busted some dance moves and launched a career as a science educator.
Lignocellulosic biomass, the woody parts of plants, is made of two types of sugars bound together by lignin. Lignin contains ring-shaped compounds known as aromatics that can be a source of valuable products traditionally derived from fossil fuels, but it's hard to pull these individual chemicals out of the mix. Some bacteria can convert plant-based aromatics into chemicals used to make plastics, but there are challenges to getting high yields.
GLBRC co-investigator Vatsan Raman, associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry, is among thirteen faculty to be honored with the H.I. Romnes Fellowships which recognize faculty with exceptional research contributions in the first six years after promotion to a tenured position.
Eric Hegg, a co-investigator with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, has been recommended to serve as the next dean of Michigan State University’s College of Natural Science effective Sept. 1, 2024.
Caleb Geissler is a fifth year PhD student in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University. With projects ranging from supply chain optimization to studying biofuels and carbon capture and storage on a national scale, his work generally centers on the application of mathematical optimization to renewable energy systems and sustainability.
Scientists with UW–Madison’s bioenergy research hub have modified poplar trees with a rice gene, making them easier to break down into more sustainable replacements for fossil fuels and petrochemicals.
Dubbed a self-driving laboratory, the system uses a computer algorithm to identify the relationship between protein sequence and function and suggest changes likely to improve certain functions. The computer then sends the protein sequences to a robotic lab that tests them and provides feedback from experimental data to help the agent improve its “understanding” of the system and guide future rounds of experiments.
Researchers in Björn Hamberger's lab at Michigan State University engineered a strain of poplar that produces squalene, turning the fast-growing trees into "biological factories" for high-value products.
From early childhood, Harrison Moon was fascinated by the natural world, and this fascination eventually steered him towards a career in plant pathology. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher in the Hittinger Lab at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
