Poplar Tree Biofuel Project: Front Page News!

Professor Gary Coleman (left) shows a poplar sample to Assistant Professor Ganesh Sriram (right).

A research project that seeks to optimize the growth cycle of poplar trees in order to turn them into a plentiful and renewable crop used for the production of biofuels was featured on the front page of the May 3, 2010 edition of the Baltimore Sun.

Assistant Professor Ganesh Sriram (Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering) and Professor Gary Coleman's (Plant Sciences and Landscape Architecture) work caught the attention of Sun reporter Meredith Cohn, who visited their labs to interview them for the story, titled "Maryland researchers turn poplar trees into biofuel."

In the wake of the recent oil spill off the Gulf Coast, Cohn sought to highlight the precariousness of our oil supply and stress importance of the development of alternative, renewable fuel sources. Sriram and Coleman's project, funded by a $3.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation, is one example of a research effort to make widespread ethanol production economically and environmentally feasible in the United States.

To read the story, visit the Baltimore Sun web site »

You can also view additional photos of Sriram and graduate student Shilpa Nargund by photographer Algerina Perna:

See a photo of Shilpa Nargund at work in the lab »
See a photo of Professor Sriram at work in the lab »
See a photo of Sriram and Nargund together in the lab »

May 4, 2010