Seed Grant Recipients Announced
MnDRIVE, Advancing Industry, Conserving Our Environment, awarded five Postdoc/Graduate fellowships and five undergraduate grants in the first round of its 2015-2016 Seed Grant program. A second round of funding was announced for the fall of 2015.
Post-Doctorate Fellowships
Dr. Sebastian Behrens received a grant for his research into engineered biochars for sulfate removal from mining waters.
Dr. Jonathan Shilling was awarded a grant to research the use of process modeling and design strategies to diversify industrial applications for fugal-augmented bioreactors.
Graduate Fellowships
Dr. Alpetkin Aksan was awarded a fellowship to engineer a silica microencapsulation system to expedite the breakdown of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a common class of pollutants in Minnesota.
Dr. Tim Griffis was awarded a fellowship to identify constructed wetland nitrogen processing nodes within headwater stream networks.
Dr. Bo Hu was awarded a fellowship to research bioremediation processes for water and nutrient recycling to improve biomass recovery and nutrient content in animal feed.
Undergraduate Fellowships
Dr. Mikael Elias for his proposal to study the molecular mechanism of bacterial phosphate uptake for the development of innovative phosphate removal methods.
Dr. Satoshi Ishii for research on algal granule bioreactors for Nitrogen and Phosphate bioremediation.
Dr. Guy Sander for his proposal to examine the fate of pharmaceutical micropollutants in wastewater treatment plants and strategies to reduce their release into the environment.