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SEBS Green Team Interns Help Develop Sustainable Solutions

Five Rutgers students participated in the Green Teams summer internship program of the PSEG Institute of Sustainability Studies at Montclair State University.  Among the five Rutgers students were two SEBS undergraduates,  Denia Cai Shi, Department of Plant Biology, and Dustin Wang, Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics.

The ten-week interdisciplinary paid internship program hired 45 students drawn from 10 universities. Building on the success of last year’s inaugural Green Team initiative, teams of five students were placed with a sponsoring corporate or municipal partner to help these leading regional and global businesses and organizations to develop sustainable solutions to challenges ranging from achieving zero waste to improving energy efficiency.

Denia Cai Shi worked with Earth Friendly Products to improve safety and reduce costs of waste disposal while  Dustin Wang worked with Princeton University and the Municipality of Princeton to develop waste management solutions.  Read more.

Michael Muller receives a 2017 Champion of Energy Efficiency in Industry Award

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has distinguished Professor Michael Muller as one of the 5 recipients of the 2017 Champion of Energy Efficiency in Industry Awards for a lifetime of leadership in developing training programs for students in industrial energy efficiency. Professor Muller has established the Center for Advanced Energy Systems and has been a central figure in the US Department of Energy Industrial Assessment Center program.

Professor Birnie Receives $500,000 NSF Grant to Support Innovative Technologies at Rutgers

Professor Dunbar Birnie, department of Materials Science and Engineering and Rutgers Energy Institute member, recently received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support Rutgers' inventions and innovation for the next five years.  He will work in collaboration with the Rutgers Office of Research Commercialization, the Rutgers Business School and the Rutgers Entrepreneurship Coalition to nuture Rutgers’ inventions through an NSF I-Corps “Site”. 

The Rutgers' I-Corp Site will provide mentoring and resources for faculty and student inventors to enhance commercialization prospects for their ideas.

Cutting the Cost of Ethanol, Other Biofuels and Gasoline

Researchers at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Michigan State University devise way to reduce the amount of enzymes needed to convert biomass into biofuels.
Biofuels like the ethanol in U.S. gasoline could get cheaper thanks to experts at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Michigan State University.

They’ve demonstrated how to design and genetically engineer enzyme surfaces so they bind less to corn stalks and other cellulosic biomass, reducing enzyme costs in biofuels production, according to a study published this month on the cover of the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

“The bottom line is we can cut down the cost of converting biomass into biofuels,” said Shishir P. S. Chundawat, senior author of the study and an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

“An Assessment of ARPA-E” released by National Academies of Science

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released a publication titled “An Assessment of ARPA-E”. The ARPA-E is the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which has funded research into tackling US energy issues and engineering.

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  2. Debashish Bhattacharya Presented the Award of Excellence by the Phycological Society of America
  3. Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States
  4. NJ Closes Two Coal Power Plants