Achievement

MASB scholar Barbara Fricks has successfully created a project that links several scientific disciplines. Her research focuses on two aspects of ecological decomposition, abiotic mechanisms in arid ecosystems/grasslands and enzymatic breakdown of biomass, to understand ecological mechanisms controlling carbon turnover of switchgrass in natural ecosystems. This work has the potential for technology transfer to industrial pre-processing applications. This project encompasses proteomic, ecological, and agricultural testing and analysis and facilitated the linkage of engineering, biology, and ecology faculty members, and established a new collaboration between these university scientists and USDA.