As part of the nation's quest to combat global warming, the federally funded Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) brings together scientists from three federal labs and three academic institutions to find more effective ways to break down cellulose and convert plant matter into air-friendly fuel.
"This is a great time to change how we produce transportation fuels in the United States," said the institute's head, Jay Keasling, a bioengineering scientist at both UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The research is driven in part by the limitations and disadvantages of the current generation of corn-based ethanol, he noted.
The institute, funded for five years with $135 million from the Department of Energy, will be housed on the top floor of a new four-story building, EmeryStation East, on Hollis Street in Emeryville's burgeoning cluster of bioscience firms and labs.
Emeryville was chosen as a convenient location for the six partner institutions. Led by the Lawrence Berkeley lab, the group includes the UC campuses at Berkeley and Davis, the Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national laboratories, and the Carnegie Institution of Science.
This article appeared on page D - 6 of the San Francisco Chronicle.
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