UW IS FINALIST FOR BIOFUEL CASH; FEDERAL GRANT WOULD START RESEARCH CENTER

BYLINE: HEATHER LaROI hlaroi@madison.com 608-252-6143

UW-Madison is on the short list for a major federal grant to study new strategies for generating biofuels.

The U.S. Department of Energy is expected to invest $125 million over five years at each of two or possibly three new bioenergy research centers, starting as early as this year.

If UW-Madison's bid gets final approval, the grant would fund the start of the proposed Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center on campus.

"I was doing handstands when we got the e-mail," said Timothy Donohue, director of the biotechnology training program in UW-Madison's bacteriology department.

Donohue, who is slated to be scientific director for the proposed program, said he is now "cautiously optimistic" that their bid will proceed.

It is not known how many other finalists are in contention for the grants.

A decision on grant recipients is expected by the end of June.

"There's been a lot of legitimate discussion lately about how much ethanol we should be making and how are we making that ethanol. I think this lab would help to change the landscape and develop a whole suite of alternative energy sources," Donohue said.

The interdisciplinary bioenergy research center, which would tap into expertise from engineers to molecular biologists to mathematicians, is a good fit not only with the university but also the state, said Molly Jahn, dean of UW-Madison's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

"It really plays to our strengths with respect to existing activities such as production, agriculture and forestry," she said. "But it also pulls from our creativity with respect to inventions.

"We're a state that generates a lot of technology that is potentially relevant to the development of biologically sourced fuels. And we're a state with a strong manufacturing sector that could position itself to contribute to the technologies that develop around biologically sourced energy."

It's expected that the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center would eventually require a new building, Donohue said -- something the federal funding would not pay for -- but existing facilities might be renovated for use in the interim.

UW-Madison would take the lead role in the center, but it would also partner with other universities, notably Michigan State, as well as local companies and national Department of Energy labs "to bring the relevant technology to the table," Donohue said.

"It really should function as a regional and national center of excellence," he said.

A significant part of the center's mission would be to make ethanol more efficiently, Donohue added, but it also would focus on generating other high-energy compounds to decrease dependence on fossil fuels.

The next-generation technology will be to make fuels from the corncobs and stalks, not just from the corn kernels, he said.

"That's the part of the plant that has a high cellulose content, whereas the kernels are high in sugar," he said. "We know how to convert sugar into fuel, or ethanol. We do it at Miller Brewing, we do it at microbreweries all over the world, and we're doing it for ethanol now.

"But in the future, we want to develop technologies to get at the cellulose and the lignin (a cellulose-related substance) that's in the cob and the stalk and convert that into fuels."

The word that UW-Madison's proposal has moved forward came as good news to Gov. Jim Doyle, who was in Washington, D.C., speaking before the Senate agriculture committee Tuesday.

"This is a critical part, an enormous part, of his overall agenda to promote the bio-industry," said Doyle spokesman Matt Canter.