EBI December 2023 Newsletter

Announcements – Opportunities – Events – Articles

1. Holiday Message from the EBI Team

2. Seminar Series Part 6

3. Alumni Spotlight: Yan Wang, Techno-economic Engineer at Shell Hydrogen

4. Two Assistant Professor Positions in BPP at Oregon State University

5. EBI Recharge Facility

6. EBI Business Incubator

7. Berkeley LSEC’s Bio Startup Speed Teaming

8. Berkeley College of Chemistry: Capturing wellhead gases for profit and a cleaner environment

9. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: New analysis outlines national opportunities to remove CO2 at the gigaton scale

10. WIRED: The Ultra-Efficient Farm of the Future is in the Sky

11. AP News: PG&E’s plan to bury power lines and prevent wildfires faces opposition because of high rates

12. Architectural Digest: See How the World’s First Solar-Powered Car Could Reshape Our Future

Announcements

Holiday Message from the EBI Team

Dear Colleagues, Partners and Friends,

As you begin to wind down for the holidays, we want to take a moment to thank you for your ongoing hard work and dedication. This year has been filled with challenges and opportunities, and we appreciate all you have done to support the Energy & Biosciences Institute and its mission. We hope you have time to relax, reflect on your positive accomplishments this past year, and enjoy making memories with friends, family, and loved ones.

Wishing you a joyous, healthy and peaceful holiday season and Happy New Year.

With gratitude,

The EBI Team

Seminar Series Part 6: “Science Communications”

Thiago Correa, the Energy & Biosciences Institute’s Strategic Planning and Development Director, joins Logan Roscoe to talk about how the EBI operates across three different institutions to offer scientific opportunities to businesses.

The Energy & Biosciences Institute is excited to announce the fourth installment in this year’s “Science Communications” virtual seminar series! The goals of this series are to:

Explore the ways in which science is communicated to different audiences
Outline potential career paths for those interested in science communications
Discuss what laymen can do to understand science in the media better

We hope you enjoy this new series and all that it will cover. Please share with students and anyone else that could be interested!

Please find the video at this link here or click the box below.

Watch video

Alumni Spotlight: Yan Wang, Techno-economic Engineer at Shell Hydrogen

Yan Wang is an alumni from University of Pittsburgh and is currently a techno-economic engineer at Shell Hydrogen. Having been involved in Corinne Scown’s (the EBI-Shell Principal Investigator) project, we are happy to pass along her feature written by the Pitt Swanson Engineering Virtual Newsroom:

“After graduating from Pitt in 2020, Wang took a postdoctoral position at the University of California, Berkeley & the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, where she focused on systems-level analysis of energy systems, including process design, techno-economic analysis, and life cycle assessment. She primarily leveraged modeling and data science skills to understand the life cycle of energy systems to reduce economic and environmental impacts.

“Today, Wang is a techno-economic engineer at Shell Hydrogen, where she works to make renewable energy more practical and economically beneficial. Her experience in lab work and systems-level analysis from her graduate and postdoctoral work gave her the perfect mix of skills to solve energy and environmental challenges.”

Explore the details of Wang’s professional journey by reading more!

Two Assistant Professor Positions in BPP at Oregon State University

The Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University is seeking applications for two tenure-track assistant professor positions.

Position 1: Plant-Microbe Interactions preferably studying mutualistic or pathogenic fungi or oomycetes to advance molecular, cellular, and/or genomic understanding of plant microbe-interactions.

Position 2: Population and Disease Dynamics of Cereal Pathogens studying the epidemiology and the genetics of cereal diseases in agroecosystems, preferably combining field experiments and molecular/genomic data to address population-level research in pathogens of wheat.

Details on these positions and instructions for applying can be found here:
https://bpp.oregonstate.edu/bpp/about/open-positions or by clicking the button below.

For full consideration, applications must be received by 1/31/24, with a closing date of 2/14/24.

Please address questions to
Dr. Jeff Chang (changj@oregonstate.edu) for position 1 and
Dr. Posy Busby (posy.busby@oregonstate.edu) for position 2

More information

Events

Berkeley LSEC’s Bio Startup Speed Teaming

The next Bio Startup Speed Teaming will be held in March 2024!

Berkeley Life Sciences Entrepreneurship Center’s Bio Startup Speed Teaming program introduces would-be startup founders with complementary expertise, with the hope of finding fruitful matches. Participants include technical experts with a potentially commercializable technology, and individuals with business, operational, or technical expertise who are interested in co-founding or joining a startup.

For more information and to sign-up, click the button below!

Berkeley College of Chemistry: Capturing wellhead gases for profit and a cleaner environment

Flaring is the process of burning natural gasses, which massively contributes to our collection of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Capturing such gas is important for the betterment of our planet, and yet it is economically difficult.

However, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, College of Chemistry have developed a simple way to convert flared natural gasses into economically valuable liquids, like methanol and ethanol.

“The new process for oxygenating hydrocarbons to alcohols mimics the way plants and animals add oxygen to carbon-hydrogen bonds to produce energy from carbohydrates, fats and proteins,” the UCB press release reads.

This study has been led by Jeffrey Long, former EBI principal investigator and UC Berkeley professor of chemistry and of chemical and biomolecular engineering. His and many others’ efforts pace the way to creative and effective solutions in climate change mitigation. Get further details by reading more.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory joined scientists from more than a dozen other labs to write and publish a report titled, “Roads to Removal: Options for Carbon Dioxide Removal in the United States.” This report charts a clear county-by-county path for the United States to achieve a net-zero greenhouse gas economy by 2050. It takes into consideration a vast range of pathways, such as soil and forest management, biomass conversion, direct air capture, and geologic storage. Explore the benefits and the potential impacts this report will have by reading more.

Horticulturalists at the University of Colorado, Boulder have taken agrivoltaics, the act of growing crops underneath solar panels, to a whole new level—literally. They have been practicing agrivoltaics on rooftops. The solar panels the crops grow beneath both protect them from overbearing sunlight and provide energy for the buildings’ operations.

Surprisingly, these scientists have found that rooftop agrivoltaics use a third as much water as full-sun rooftop agriculture does. Because the crops are shaded, less water evaporates away. Findings such as these are hopeful for more energy-efficient and fruitful agricultural practices. Get further details by reading more.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has sparked recent controversy over their proposed plans to bury their power lines underground. While it would be a safer approach, following the multiple times their powerlines have caused California wildfires, the project would cost $5.9 billion and would take quite some time. Furthermore, the company’s customers, who already have some of the highest rates in the country, would have to pay for the project’s execution. As such, state regulators have opposed the plan.

PG&E have offered an alternative of putting protective covers over many of its overhead power lines instead of burying them. This would be a cheaper approach, but far riskier. The powerlines, even if covered, can still be blown over by windstorms and start fires—which cannot happen if they are underground to begin with. Get further details by reading more.

A group of engineering students from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands just completed a 620-mile drive across Morocco in an electric SUV with zero stops for gas. The car was powered entirely by solar panels atop its roof. This car, named Stella Terra, is a massive leap forward in energy efficient vehicles. Stella Terra’s design takes into account air resistance, reduced weight, and dozens of other considerations that help the car use as little energy as necessary.

Equipped with exceptionally creative designs like the solar panels expanding out into an awning when stationary, Stella Terra is fully road-legal and can drive up to speeds of 90 mph. Get even more details by continuing to read!