On April 21 and 22, 2016, the Department of Energy (DOE) hosted the National Laboratory Big Ideas near Washington, D.C. The Summit was the third annual gathering to elicit large-scale, potentially game-changing ideas from DOE’s 17 national laboratories working collaboratively to tackle the nation’s energy and science challenges. A theme of this year’s Summit was the Presidential Mission Innovation initiative to dramatically accelerate global clean energy innovation to address climate change.
Blake Simmons, Division Director of Biological Systems & Engineering Division (BSE), gave a presentation during the Summit entitled, “The BioFoundry: Advancing the Bioeconomy through Biomanufacturing.” The BioFoundry will help realize the scientific vision outlined in the Biomanufacturing section of the Biosciences Strategic Plan. The BioFoundry will enable discovery science as well as address key R&D barriers for engineering biology, process integration, and scaling to relevant production scales.
Biosciences Area scientists collaborated on another Berkeley Lab presentation at the Summit. Trent R. Northen, Interim Division Director of Environmental Genomics & Systems Biology (EGSB), and Jenny Mortimer, Director of Plant Systems Biology at the Joint BioEnergy Institute, contributed to a presentation by Margaret Torn, Senior Scientist in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area, on “Enhancing the Global Carbon Sink.”
Read more about the DOE Big Ideas Summit.
