This week, NCERC participated at the 2021 Farm Progress Show in Decatur, IL. As part of the Illinois Corn and Illinois Soybean tent, NCERC Executive Director John Caupert and Director of Business Development & Client Relations Jackie Hayes (formerly Pohlman) were active at the show and at NCERC's display, which featured the exciting opportunities for corn in the growing industrial biotechnology community. Staff also utilized NCERC's Ethanol Process Demonstration boards to provide students and Show-goers with an overview of the corn-to-ethanol process.

On Wednesday, September 1 at the Congressional Biofuels Summit hosted by Congressman Rodney Davis, NCERC Executive Director John Caupert gave an ethanol industry overview and provided the audience with an update on market opportunities and challenges facing the US ethanol industry. During his remarks, he highlighted the domestic opportunities for higher blends as well as the regulatory challenges facing the industry.

On Tuesday, August 24, NCERC hosted three members of the Illinois General Assembly for the first of multiple "Legislators to Laboratories" tours in Illinois. This series of events is part of an advocacy effort to build support for the Industrial Biotech Partnership Act, a bill that would support the biotech business community in Illinois and leverage the existing assets, including centers like NCERC, to better attract biotechnology innovation and industrial biotechnology business to the state.

The guest list included Illinois Senators Terri Bryant and Doris Turner and Representative Charlie Meier, who were joined by a staff member of IL Senator Rachelle Aud Crowe's office and SIU and SIUE leadership, SIU President Dan Mahony, SIU Executive Director for Governmental & Public Affairs John Charles, and SIUE Chancellor Randy Pembrook. Staff members of Illinois commodity groups, including Illinois Corn, Illinois Soybean, and Illinois Farm Bureau were also in attendance and provided important feedback on the value of this bill for their members.

The event was led by the Illinois Industrial Biotech Coalition, which NCERC is a member of, who will host additional events across the state, including an additional event at NCERC in September.

Through a project led by The Ohio State University College of Engineering, Jie Dong, PhD, director of fermentation at the NCERC at SIUE and assistant professor at the Department of Chemistry at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, is part of a team of researchers who received a $1.6 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to produced advanced biofuel. The funding will be used to develop engineered microbial consortia for the production of biobutanol, an advanced and efficient biofuel, from renewable biomass with higher product yields and zero carbon dioxide emissions.

“We are excited about Dr. Dong’s future work with this team of collaborators to produce biobutanol utilizing a novel method with negative or net-zero carbon emissions,” said NCERC Executive Director John Caupert. “NCERC has played an important role in biobutanol research for many years through work with our clients in the private sector, and I’m happy to see this research continue with researchers from top engineering universities.”

Dong’s collaborators include Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Professor Shang-Tian Yang, the project’s principal investigator, and Ting Lu, PhD, from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The project team will develop a novel fermentation process by combining three bacterial species and an electrochemically-reduced formate to maximize carbon conversion and butanol production with zero or negative carbon dioxide emissions. Butanol is generally used as an industrial solvent, but can also be blended with gasoline and used in engines of light-duty vehicles. Biobutanol is produced from fermentation of the same feedstocks as ethanol – corn, sugar beets and other types of biomass.

Throughout summer 2021, NCERC is working on a client trial that requires significant operations support through dozens of Assistant Scientific Analysts, Operating Technicians, and both Laboratory and Plant intern positions. These temporary positions are incredible opportunities for students, recent graduates, or those who want to work in biochemistry to gain impressive hands-on experience.

The minimum requirements for the analyst/technician positions are a high school diploma/GED and 24 months of experience/schooling in related fields/operations. The only minimum requirements to qualify for an intern position is a high school diploma or GED.

Open Positions:

Internships:

Contact NCERC Business Manager Barb Randle with any questions or leads.

The selected individual will assist the NCERC’s Director of Research and Director of Fermentation in the design of self-initiated research projects as well as projects that fulfill commitments made to external funding sources such as sponsored projects and grants. The Fellow will also assist the Director of Business Development and Client Relations, as well as the Project Management Engineer, with the onboarding and project design of contractual research projects with companies from the private sector.

Applicants must have a Ph.D. (ABD candidates may be considered) in chemical engineering, agricultural engineering, biological sciences or a related field. Experience with biofuels is strongly recommended. Additional technical skills needed include:

-Capable to work independently;

-Ability to design experiments and a strong background in statistics;

-Technical knowledge to troubleshoot analytical equipment;

-Excellent written and oral skills and attention to details.

Application Process - Applicants should submit resume, cover letter, transcripts, and three professional references to:

Barb Randle

NCERC at SIUE

400 University Park Drive

Edwardsville, IL 62025

Completed application packages can also be emailed to: brandle@siue.edu. Please use pdf format when emailing documents.

The National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) is looking for a marketing/public relations intern to support the strategic communications efforts of the Center.

- Generate and maintain content of NCERC social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Youtube in order to increase the Center’s exposure to all audiences.

- Assist with event planning and meeting coordination including sending out invitations and updates, coordinating logistics with internal and external stakeholders, and preparing all necessary accommodations for guests.

- Support routine external-facing communications efforts, such as the monthly newsletter.

- Schedules and coordinates tours of the NCERC facility with external groups.

- Additional marketing-related tasks assigned as needed.

Position Contact Information

Email: brandle@siue.edu

Campus Box 1334

Phone: 618-659-6737, Ext. 228

Required Documents

Please submit resume and cover letter.

NCERC's research team has been working on an in-situ fermentation of corn kernel fiber with intentions to produce high-protein DDGS for use in an aquaculture feeding trial. The early results of this study were showcased at FEW and work will continue this fall with the support of students from SIUE. NCERC hopes to continue scaling up this work this fall, depending on the client schedule and available pretreatment vessels. Thank you to IL Corn for funding this exciting research!

Work on hemp to biofuel conversion will continue this fall through funding provided to NCERC Director of Fermentation Dr. Jie Dong from a special SIUE funding program, COVID-19 Assigned Research Time, that enables assistant and associate professors to address promotion and tenure research activities that have been negatively impacted by the COVID 19 pandemic.

As a continued effort to scale up sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) conversion, NCERC has hired another graduate assistant who will assist Dr. Dong in this area of his research throughout the academic year. This research is part of a larger group of researchers who submitted a grant proposal to the Dept of Energy's Bioenergy Technology Office in June with plans to commercialize a corn to isopentenol to SAF method.

Through funding provided by SIUE’s Transitional and Exploratory Projects (STEP) grant program, NCERC will continue our research on the conversion of municipal solid waste (MSW), waste that comes from both residential and commercial sources, to biofuel. NCERC recently hired a graduate assistant to lead this research over the next academic year, with hopes that we will continue to scale up the conversion method initially established by Director of Research Dr. Yan Zhang.

This month's featured employee spotlight is NCERC Assistant Ethanol Plant Scientific Analyst, Lilia Ban. John has been on NCERC's team since September of 2017 and works in the lab on projects/samples to produce results for clients.

Lilia also works closely with the lab team and the Director of Research to do research and development on any project and performs maintenance on NCERC's instrumentation, namely the HPLCs. In addition to these duties, she also trains students workers and extra helpers on lab techniques.

According to Lilia, she is proud of every project she's been a part of that has been successful in the lab!

Springfield, IL

August 17

Minneapolis, MN

August 18 - 20

NCERC Facility

August 24

Decatur, IL

August 31 - September 2

Virtual

September 8

St. Louis, MO

September 14

Washington, DC

September 20 - 23

NCERC Facility

September 27

Des Moines, IA

September 28 - 30

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