Read the February 28 Rice University News and Media article for more.

CBiRC faculty affiliate, Eve Syrkin Wurtele, was awarded the Woman of Innovation award for Research Innovation and Leadership by the Technology Association of Iowa (TAI) at their fifth annual DuPont Pioneer Iowa Women of Innovation event held on November 15, 2012 in Des Moines. This is the second consecutive year Dr. Wurtele was a finalist for this award.

Nominations were submitted for women from communities across the state. Finalists represent a range of backgrounds: teachers, researchers, technologists, vice-presidents, presidents, CIOs, and CEOs, among other titles. They include scholarship winners and providers. Many nominees are nationally and internationally recognized through various publications, panels, and media outlets. They all represent excellence in innovation and leadership. Finalists also include high school, undergraduate and graduate students who have demonstrated extraordinary and unique achievements in technology.

The TAI is the premier professional organization accelerating the success of Iowa’s technology industry and tech-based economy. Read the full story.

Read the December 3 Chemical & Engineering News article for more.

Engineers and scientists are working together in new ways to invent catalysts that lead to industrial chemicals from biorenewable resources. Industrial partnerships are expanding. Startup companies are launching. Education partnerships are reaching teachers and students. And an international reputation is growing.

They’re all steps the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center for Biorenewable Chemicals based at Iowa State University has made over its initial four years. That progress has led to the NSF augmenting the center (known as CBiRC, “See-burk”) with three additional years and $12 million.

That brings the total federal investment in the center through the NSF’s Engineering Research Center program up to $30.5 million over eight years. The center can still be renewed for an additional two years, potentially bringing the NSF’s total support to 10 years and $34.9 million. After 10 years, CBiRC will transition to a self-supporting research center. In addition to the center’s base funding, it has so far garnered more than $14 million in other support.

“In four years we’ve certainly come together as a center and we have a shared vision across all the researchers,” said Brent Shanks, the center’s director and the Mike and Jean Steffenson Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Iowa State. “We are accomplishing what the NSF wanted – interdisciplinary research.”

The center’s vision is to transform the industrial chemical industry – a $400 billion-a-year business in the United States – from one based on petroleum to one based on biorenewable resources. To do that, the center has asked researchers who study chemical or biological catalysts to start working together to develop new and sustainable technologies that produce the industrial chemicals used in everything from building materials to personal-care products.

Basil Nikolau, the center’s deputy director and the Frances M. Craig Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology at Iowa State, said the center’s interdisciplinary approach is attracting the attention of industry.

“We are making progress and a measure of that is the companies that have joined us,” Nikolau said. “We’re setting a new paradigm for this research. We’re doing basic research that companies are buying into.”

When the center was established, it had six industrial partners. The center now has 27 (including Ashland, Chevron Phillips Chemical Co., DuPont, Grain Processing Corp., Michelin Americas Research Co., and POET) and is discussing additional partnerships. The center is also spinning off four companies in Iowa and three from partner institutions. The Iowa startups include Glucan Biorenewables LLC, originally established by Shanks; Peter Keeling, the center’s industrial collaboration and innovation consultant; and James Dumesic, the Steenbock Professor and Michel Boudart Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The center has also attracted attention from funding agencies and the science media:

• Earlier this year, Nikolau, Keeling and Shivani Garg – a graduate student in biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology – won an Innovation Corps grant from the NSF. The grant will support their work to develop bio-based chemical feedstocks.
• And, the CBiRC way – combining chemical and biological technologies to produce biorenewable chemicals – was recently featured in Chemical & Engineering News. The story by Mitch Jacoby notes that “coupling chemical and biological processing offers advantages over either one on its own.”

In addition to those developments, the leaders of the center’s three research thrusts said they’re seeing many signs of technical progress:

Thrust one, new biocatalysts for pathway engineering

Joseph Noel – professor and director of the Jack H. Skirball Center for Chemical Biology and Proteomics at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute based in Chevy Chase, Md. – said the program has identified pyrones as molecules for the center’s testbed research across disciplines. He said researchers have developed protein engineering techniques to improve the production of biorenewable molecules from sugar by common baker’s yeast. Chemical catalysts then convert the molecules to commodity chemicals. Noel said the research program has also successfully integrated high school and undergraduate students in its laboratories.

Thrust two, microbial metabolic engineering

Jackie Shanks, the Manley Hoppe Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Iowa State, said researchers have used E. coli to produce carboxylic acids at the highest level reported to date. Carboxylic acids can be used to produce many industrial chemicals. She said researchers have also improved E. coli’s ability to resist the toxicity of the acids.

Thrust three, chemical catalyst design

Robert Davis, the Earnest Jackson Oglesby Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said researchers have made significant progress converting pyrones from research thrusts one and two to high-value chemicals. He said researchers have also developed technologies that convert carboxylic acids to alpha olefins that are used to make detergents and other chemicals.

Brent Shanks said the center has established several education initiatives, including a graduate minor in biorenewable chemicals at Iowa State, research internships at the center’s European partners, a summer research program for undergraduates, research experiences and workshops for school teachers and a program that places graduate students in middle school science classrooms.

All in all, Shanks said the center’s work is getting noticed and its researchers are taking calls from industry, technical conferences and the biorenewable research community.

“It is our driving goal,” he said, “to be considered the place in the world to do biorenewable chemicals.”

Tuesday, March 20, 6 to 8 pm
Delta Upsilon Fraternity House – 117 Ash Avenue
Home of the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Learning Community

Last day for online registration - March 9

http://www.isupjcenter.org/programs/innovationpitchcompetition/

Students may also apply for:
Pappajohn New Venture Business Plan Competition – Deadline to file Intent is February 29; Plans due March 28

John & Mary Pappajohn Scholarship Program – Deadline March 19

Okoboji Entrepreneurship Institute – Deadline March 23

Thursday, February 23, 2012, 7:00 PM @ Sun Room, Memorial Union  - Stephen Osborn is a hydrogeologist with an expertise in natural gas geochemistry and water quality issues specific to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. He was the lead author on a recent study at Duke University that shows methane contamination of drinking water associated with shale-gas extraction in northeastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York. Osborn is currently an assistant professor in the Geology Department at California State Polytechnic University Pomona. He has also worked as a consultant, conducting hydrogeologic and environmental investigations in the northeastern and southwestern United States. Osborn holds a Master’s degree in soil science from the University of California at Riverside and in geology from Georgia State University. He earned his PhD from the University of Arizona.

Energy Sustainability in a Changing World – BP Chief Scientist Ellen D. Williams

Monday, February 27, 2012, 8:00 PM @ Great Hall, Memorial Union  - Ellen Williams to serves as Chief Scientist at British/Beyond Petroleum. BP is the third largest oil company and the fifth largest corporation on the planet, and as BPπs Chief Scientist Ellen plays a role in determining how developments in science and technology can contribute to sustainable, secure and environmentally responsible energy. She will discuss specific examples of carbon capture and storage, as well as biofuels.  She is on leave from the University of Maryland where she is Distinguished University Professor of Physics and director of the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center.

Startup City

This is a Des Moines based company that helps new businesses get started by providing them with an office. If you are in the area, need some mentoring from seasoned businessmen, and plan to use an office on a regular basis, this might just be a great place for you.

http://www.startupcitydsm.com/

ISU Pappajohn center

The Pappajohn Center provides a diverse array of resources for new startups, including access to market research, office space, and mentoring.

http://www.isupjcenter.org/

BR C 507X course

This course is taught by Dr. Peter Keeling, and covers many of the practical aspects of taking a new technology to market. There are also several guest speakers who can later become excellent contacts when you are ready to start. Anyone from a CBiRC partner institution can take the class, and students will also have an opportunity to present their business idea to CBiRC leaders at the end of the course.

CBiRC Graduate Minor

Iowa State Course Listing

This post is the first of a series of posts meant to engage the entrepreneurial students of CBiRC. If you are a CBiRC member and would like to share more resources for entrepreneurs at any of our universities (including a list of resources focused on a specific university), please send an email to the CBiRC Web Chair, currently mnolan@iastate.edu.

Streaming recording link:

https://mmancusa.webex.com/mmancusa/ldr.php?AT=pb&SP=MC&rID=44677237&rKey=c512dd2e9cae865c

Download link:

https://mmancusa.webex.com/mmancusa/lsr.php?AT=dw&SP=MC&rID=44677237&rKey=83889755e5cf7bda

Youtube: