In a free public seminar at 3:30 PM on September 11, in room 1115 of the Wisconsin Energy Institute, UW–Madison professor of bacteriology and Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) director Tim Donohue will present a talk on the past and future of GLBRC research.
![Tim Donohue](/sites/default/files/styles/440px_wide/public/news/img/donohue.png?itok=vEKN2Dr6)
The Bioenergy Research Center (BRC) program at the U.S. Department of Energy was established in 2007 to address one of this country’s greatest challenges – developing sustainable alternatives to the fuels and chemicals currently derived from petroleum. BRCs, including the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) based at UW-Madison, are thus charged with making the basic science advances needed to produce fuels and chemicals from biomass and to add non-edible, lignocellulosic plant material to the nation’s energy supply chain. Research activities include increasing biomass yield, improving plant feedstocks, optimizing biomass deconstruction for cost-effectiveness, and engineering microbes to maximize biomass conversion.
With a renewal of the BRC program for another five years, GLBRC scientists and recently recruited experts will conduct research that enables the sustainable production of specialty biofuels and bio-products using dedicated bioenergy crops such as switchgrass, poplar trees and sorghum. These bioenergy crops will be grown on marginal – or non-agricultural – land, a shift from GLBRC’s previous mission of producing biofuels from crops grown on agricultural land.