Industry News
Sept. 9, 2008

Colorado State University receives $3 million biofuels grant to train future workforce

The biofuels industry in Colorado and around the nation has grown so complex that the next generation of scientists need to know all its angles — from the chemistry of making it to the economics of selling it, said Colorado State University (CSU) professor Ken Reardon, the recipient of a $3 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to provide interdisciplinary biofuels training for doctoral students.

Cutting-edge research will be critical for growth in the biofuels industry, said Reardon, a professor of chemical and biological engineering.

“The grant’s purpose is to create doctoral training programs that will prepare graduates to play an active role in the nation’s science and engineering future. The biofuels industry needs people who understand the whole picture — where biomass comes from, the ways in which it’s transformed into fuels and chemicals and whether the entire process is sustainable.”

The NSF grant will establish the Integrated Graduate Education in Biorefining and Biofuels Program and will support the education of up to 45 doctoral students during the next five years in everything from environmental assessment (greenhouse gas effects) to fuel engineering and plant biotechnology. CSU will provide an additional $600,000 for graduate teaching assistants and tuition premiums; the funding also supports four master’s degree students from CSU–Pueblo.

“We’re very supportive of this program given the changing nature of the biofuel industry,” said Stephen Brand, senior vice president of technology for ConocoPhillips, which is a partner in the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory and its Center for Biorefining and Biofuels. “Through the Collaboratory, we look forward to working with students from Colorado State [University] and other institutions in the state to drive innovation to further the potential of renewable energy.”

The grant, from NSF’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program, is one of only 20 selected nationwide. Other CSU faculty members who helped develop the proposal and will run the program with Reardon are Dan Bush, chair of the biology department; Jan Leach, University Distinguished Professor of bioagricultural sciences and pest management; and Keith Paustian, professor of soil and crop sciences and senior research scientist in the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory.

At least 20 faculty members across the university are expected to mentor doctoral students in the traineeship program, many from the colleges of Engineering, Natural Sciences and Applied Human Sciences. Students must be enrolled as graduate students in a science, engineering or economics field to participate.

“The program is truly integrative — faculty, staff and students working from across disciplines to address not just a Colorado challenge but a great global challenge,” said Peter Dorhout, vice provost for Graduate Affairs. “Dr. Reardon’s diverse team is poised to significantly impact how students are trained to confront these challenges at CSU and as leaders in the workforce beyond the university.”

Typically, students on campus study one discipline related to biofuels, such as chemical engineering, to develop new fuel production processes or economics to measure financial implications of using different fuels. With Reardon’s grant, students in science, engineering and economics will be teamed to study various aspects of the biofuels industry.

“Although biofuel production has increased, current production methods are not sufficient to meet long-term needs in terms of capacity, net energy production, water consumption and carbon balance,” Paustian said. “My research has shown that the extent to which specific biofuels can reduce greenhouse gases varies considerably, depending on the energy requirements and emissions through the entire production chain.”

Biofuels research is increasingly important to the state’s economy. Gov. Ritter’s Climate Action Plan eventually requires state vehicles to run on biofuels and calls for expanded funding for biofuels research. Additionally, CSU is a participant in the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory, which provides cooperation among the three major research universities in the state and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Reardon is CSU’s liaison to the Collaboratory’s Center for Biorefining and Biofuels.

As part of the program, companies such as Shell Global Solutions and General Motors have committed to providing internships for students.

The grant is just one piece of $5 million awarded to the university since May for biofuels research and evaluation of greenhouse gas inventories. Other biofuels-related grants awarded to CSU since May:

In July, CSU received $1.5 million, the largest single grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), to accelerate research in the development of cellulosic biofuels. Cellulosic biofuels, unlike ethanol derived from cornstarch, are made from the large molecules — cellulose and hemicellulose — that comprise the woody part of many common plants.

The Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory — a cooperative arrangement between CSU, Colorado University–Boulder, Colorado School of Mines and NREL to conduct clean energy research — awarded CSU four seed grants totaling $200,000 for research on biofuels through the Collaboratory’s Center for Biorefining and Biofuels.

The Colorado Governor’s Energy Office awarded $175,000 to Paustian to develop a greenhouse gas emissions mitigation program for the state’s agricultural industry as part of Gov. Ritter’s Climate Action Plan goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020.

Colorado State hosts climate change lecture series for students and the public

Just how, and why, is the planet’s climate changing? What does this mean to people in Colorado and worldwide? To help answer these and other climate change questions, CSU is launching a series of seven public lectures that will run through the academic school year addressing global warming from a variety of perspectives. The series, “Climate Change: What We All Need To Know,” will kick-off at 7 p.m., Sept. 11 in the North Ballroom of Lory Student Center with, “Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future,” given by David Randall, professor in CSU’s Department of Atmospheric Science. An open discussion will follow.

All lectures in the series are free and open to the public. All lectures will be begin at 7 p.m. in the North Ballroom of the Lory Student Center. The full schedule follows:

Sept. 11 – “Climate Change: Past, Present, & Future,” presented by David Randall, CSU, Atmospheric Science

Oct. 9 – “The Biological & Ecological Effects of Climate Change,” presented by Alan Knapp, CSU, Biology

Nov. 6 – “The Economics of Climate Change,” presented by Charles Kolstad, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, Economics

Nov. 13 – “Climate Change and the Literary Imagination,” presented by Linda Bierds, Univ. of Washington, English and Marybeth Holleman, Univ. of Alaska, Anchorage, English

Feb. 5 – “Solutions to the Climate/Energy Problem,” presented by Scott Denning, CSU, Atmospheric Science

March 12 – “The Effects of Climate Change on People,” presented by Lori Peek, CSU, Sociology

April 9 – “Climate Change Politics & Policy Making,” presented by Dr. Michele Betsill, CSU, Political Science

This year’s lecture series is part of an ongoing program called Changing Climates @ CSU, which seeks to increase public awareness and understanding of current science and research on climate change.

For more information, contact John Calderazzo in the CSU Department of English at 970-491-6896 or jcaldera@lamar.colostate.edu, or visit Changing Climates at@ CSU on the web at http://changingclimates.colostate.edu.

New crop model should speed resistance to wheat diseases

An Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist’s work with a wild grass could help breeders to more quickly develop wheat that’s resistant to key diseases.

David Garvin, a plant geneticist at the ARS Plant Science Research Unit in Saint Paul, Minn., was perhaps the first scientist in the United States to work on the small grass Brachypodium distachyon as a model species for cereal crops.

Garvin can produce seed in less than two months with some of his Brachypodium genetic stocks. That’s important because it reduces the time required to perform experiments that may lead to improved resistance of wheat, barley and other related cereal crops to major diseases like rusts.

Rusts are the most common wheat diseases in the United States and worldwide, causing yearly losses in all wheat market classes. New races of these diseases continually appear in the United States, overcoming the resistance that breeders build and rebuild continually into wheat varieties.

His work attracted the attention of John Vogel, the first scientist to see the potential of using Brachypodium as a model for improving grasses like switchgrass for biofuel use. Vogel is a geneticist at the ARS Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif.

Together with their ARS colleagues, this team made ARS a leader in getting Brachypodium adopted worldwide as a model for grass research. Seeds of Garvin’s genetic stocks have been shared with research scientists in 25 states and 20 countries.

Garvin has also developed populations of Brachypodium that are being used to create the first genetic maps of Brachypodium.

ARS has given scientists worldwide free access to not only the seeds but also to genes and a draft sequence of the entire Brachypodium genome. This has contributed greatly to the adoption of Brachypodium by plant researchers worldwide as a model grass just a few years since it emerged from obscurity.

Read more about the research in the September 2008 issue of Agricultural Research magazine, available online at: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/sep08/grass0908.htm.

Farmers can now apply for SARE grants

Farmers and ranchers in the north central region can now submit proposals for grants to support sustainable agriculture projects.

The 2008 North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (NCR-SARE) Farmer Rancher Grant Call for Proposals is now available online at http://www.sare.org/NCRSARE/prod.htm.

Grants can range from $6,000 for individual farmers and up to $18,000 for groups of three or more farmers. Beginning farmers and youth may also apply. Projects should emphasize research or education/demonstration.

The deadline for proposals is Dec. 1 at 4:30 p.m.

NCR-SARE expects to fund about 50 projects in the 12-state North Central Region. The NCR has funded more than 650 farmer rancher grants worth more than $4.3 million since the program’s inception.

For more information, contact Ohio’s SARE coordinators Mike Hogan at 330-627-4310 or hogan.1@osu.edu or Alan Sundermeier at 419-354-9050 or sundermeier.5@osu.edu, or log on to http://sustainableag.osu.edu.

— compiled by Tosha Powell, assistant editor, Angus Productions Inc.