Biosciences News

Bioreactors are at the heart of biomanufacturing. These vessels help scientists understand how their technologies perform and how to scale them up. However, transferring processes between bioreactors is often difficult. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office’s Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit (ABPDU) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory received this feedback from their collaborators, who suggested that ABPDU create a set of tools that would make these processes easier.

Elliot Perryman, a computer science and physics major at the University of Tennessee, began working with staff scientist Peter Zwart in the Center for Advanced Mathematics for Energy Research Applications (CAMERA) last fall through the Berkeley Lab Undergraduate Research (BLUR) program. Together they developed an algorithm that will extract better structures from low-quality crystallographic diffraction data.

Pamela Ronald, the  Joint BioEnergy Institute’s (JBEI) Scientific Lead for Plant Pathology in the Feedstocks division, has been named the 2020 World Agriculture Prize laureate by the Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agricultural and Life Sciences, or GCHERA. Ronald is a distinguished professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis (one of JBEI’s six academic research partners) and with the UC Davis  Genome Center. She becomes the first woman whose work is recognized by the award.  The virtual award ceremony will be held on November 30.

Patrick Shih, the Joint BioEnergy Institute’s (JBEI) Director of Plant Biosystems Design in the Feedstocks Division, has been awarded a 2020 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation. Shih is an assistant professor in the Department of Plant Biology, College of Biological Sciences at UC Davis, one of JBEI’s six academic research partners. 

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is supporting the development of a unique microscopy concept pioneered by researchers at Berkeley Lab as part of the Foundation’s Symbiosis in Aquatic Systems Initiative (SASI). The Berkeley Lab effort has received $500,000 and will be led by senior staff scientist Hoi-Ying Holman of the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division.