The Missouri Life Sciences Research Board has funded Washington University’s International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES) nearly $3 million for biofuels research.
Researchers at I-CARES will collaborate with others at Saint Louis University, the University of Missouri campuses in Columbia and St. Louis and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
The emphasis of the research will be on establishing alternative sources of fuel as well as reducing carbon dioxide generation and its potential environmental consequences.
“The funding received by I-CARES from the State of Missouri is crucial to the ongoing research efforts at Washington University and our partner institutions,” said Washington University Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. “Effective research aimed at creating more sustainable and green energy resources will have far-reaching consequences to the environment and economy of our region, our state, and the world.”
“We are very pleased to receive this funding, and we believe that the work that we do with it will advance the region’s green technologies and alternative fuels,” said I-CARES Director Himadri B. Pakrasi, Ph.D., the George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, and Professor of Energy in the School of Engineering. “This will make our region more competitive globally, and it gets I-CARES off to an impressive start.”
I-CARES was announced on June 4, 2007 by Chancellor Wrighton, who said that the University would invest more than $55 million to encourage and coordinate university-wide and external collaborative research in the areas of renewable energy and sustainability — including biofuels, CO2 mitigation and coal-related issues.
Washington University was one of 43 applicants for funding from the Life Sciences Research Board, and received nearly one-third of the $10.4 million in basic research distributed to 13 other projects.