Achievement

Trainee N. Bennette, who will receive his doctorate this summer, credits his participation in our IGERT project with expanding his horizons about career options and helping him decide what to do for the next phase of his professional development. Originally thinking that postdoctoral research within his core discipline would be the logical (“default“) next step, Bennette reports that his IGERT project in Life Cycle Analyses and our IGERT-developed course in Integrated Energy Challenges & Opportunities were “instrumental in exposing me to the vast number of energy solutions nearly ready for deployment” and led to “a personal redirection of my professional ambitions away from bench-top research toward options in sustainability consulting and management.” He has sought out and obtained an offer from a leading national consulting firm, where he will be integrating his in-field technical knowledge of algal metabolomics with economic assessments of emerging biofuels/bioenergy technologies.