Franklin joint-appointment faculty receive $2 million for biofuel development

Faculty appointments that facilitate collaborations across the UGA campus continue to pay off:

with the help of grants from the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy, University of Georgia professors Chung-Jui Tsai and Andrew Paterson are conducting fundamental research to better understand the plants that may one day produce the fuel that powers our vehicles and homes.

Tsai, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and professor in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources and the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, received $1.496 million to study the importance of plant proteins called tubulin, which play critical roles in many basic plant functions.

We've noted this in the Chronicles before and we will again - because interdiciplinarity is prioritized by the federal agencies who fund research. Solutions for issues like alternative fuels necessarily reach across discipline boundaries, no matter what particular part of the process - breaking down the sugars in plants or getting greater yields from biomass feedstocks - they are trying to address. Concerted effort and collaboration, marshalling resources, is the priority, and it's great to see the efforts of scientists who exemplify it being rewarded. They create great opportunities for our graduate students and broaden the expertise that flows into our classrooms. And all the while their efforts bring us that us much closer to sustainable energy solutions.  

Image of professor Chung-Jui Tsai, courtesy of the University of Georgia.