Creative Discovery Museum is one of the top children's museums in the country. Located in the heart of downtown Chattanooga, just steps away from the Tennessee Aquarium, Tennessee Riverfront and other fun Chattanooga Attractions for kids.
The Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI) vision is to accelerate domestication of bioenergy-relevant plants and microbes to enable high-impact, value-added, co-product development at multiple points in the bioenergy supply chain.
CBI has identified research targets for a thriving bioeconomy:
CBI will pursue a host of new technologies to alleviate critical cost barriers to sustainable, economically viable production of bio-based products and advanced biofuels. The center will focus on creating robust, high-yielding feedstock plants using genetic technology and bioengineering. CBI will create methods for high-yield production of advanced biofuels that can be blended with existing transportation fuels. Researchers will also study ways to develop valuable byproducts from lignin left over after biomass processing.
The CBI team is positioned to develop breakthrough technologies and scientific advances by uniting a team of senior science leaders with a proven desire and ability to accomplish challenging goals specifically targeted to barriers facing the emerging bioeconomy.
CBI is one of four Biological and Environmental Research (BER) Centers within the Department of Energy’s Office of Science created to expand on the foundational successes of former bioenergy research centers and to lay the scientific groundwork for a new robust, biobased economy.
The mission of the Energy Department is to ensure America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions.
The BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) is a multi-institutional (18 partners), multidisciplinary research (biological, chemical, physical and computational sciences, mathematics and engineering) organization focused on the fundamental understanding and elimination of biomass recalcitrance. BESC is one of three Bioenergy Research Centers established by DOE's Office of Science in 2007 to accelerate research toward the development of cost-effective advanced biofuels.
BESC's approach to improve accessibility to the sugars within biomass involves 1) designing plant cell walls for rapid deconstruction and 2) developing multitalented microbes for converting plant biomass into biofuels in a single step (consolidated bioprocessing). Addressing the roadblock of biomass recalcitrance will require a multiscale understanding of plant cell walls from biosynthesis to deconstruction pathways. This integrated understanding would generate models, theories and finally processes that will be used to understand and overcome biomass recalcitrance.
