Dr. Wang and Dr. He featured in Auburn Engineering and Auburn Research News – September 2023
After Receiving two research grants, one from the USDA and one from the NSF, Dr. Wang and Dr. He were featured in Auburn Engineering News and Auburn Research News. More details can be found here.
Wang and He groups visited Lindstrom Lab at the University of Washinton – August 2023
Dr. Wang and Dr. He took their group members, Loyal and Reza, to visit their collaborator, Prof. Lindstrom’s lab (University of Washington) in Seattle. Prof Lindstrom is a world leader in methanotrophy and a National Academy of Science member.
Dr. Wang and Dr. He received an NSF grant to investigate novel biotechnology for methane capture from air – July 2023
Dr. Wang and Dr. He recently received an NSF EAGER grant, titled “A Novel Multi-Tray “Dry” Biofilm Reactor for Methane Capture from Air”. This grant will support the development of a biofilm reactor for methane capture from air. This grant is part of a three-grant cluster enabling collaboration between the Wang & He Groups at Auburn University and the Lidstrom Group at the University of Washington. The other two NSF grants support Lidstrom Group’s research on novel biocatalyst discovery
Wang group presents at the 11th World Congress of Chemical Engineering – June 2023
Dr. Wang’s talk, titled “Biofilm-based Cultivation: A High Throughput and Energy-Efficient Platform for Biological Methane/Biogas Conversion”, was selected as a keynote speaker at the 11th WCCE, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The talk was well-received at the conference.
Loyal Murphy’s talk, titled “ A Cost-Effective Screening Station Expedites the Identification of the Optimal Methanotroph-Microalgae Cocultures for a Novel Waste-to-Value Technology” was selected as a Rapid Fire presentation, also well received at the conference.
Wang Group presents at the Symposium of Biomaterials, Fuels, and Chemicals in Portland, OR – April 2023
Ali Bradford, Loyal Murphy, and Dr. Wang attended the 46th Symposium on Biomaterials, Fuels and Chemicals in Portland, OR from Apr. 28 to May 1. Ali’s presented a poster titled, “The effect of pre-culture condition on the methanotrophic response to extreme oxidative stress.” Loyal’s poster was titled “ Understanding the intertwined redox balance and energy production in Clostridium tyrobutyricum for mutant design,” and Dr. Wang’s poster was titled “Elucidation of the emergent metabolic interactions within a model methanotroph-cyanobacteria coculture for biogas valorization.” All posters received broad attention and very positive feedback from other conference attendees.
Dr. Wang and Dr. He received a grant to develop waste-to-feed biotechnology – March 2023
Dr. Wang and Dr. He recently received a USDA-NIFA grant, titled “Circular aquaculture through a next-generation waste-to-feed biotechnology”. Through collaboration with Dr. Davis from the School of Fishery, Aquaculture & Aquatic Sciences, this project will develop and validate a novel, sustainable, and profitable waste-to-feed (W2F) biotechnology. W2F technologies will help develop a circular aquaculture industry that not only helps feed the increasing global population but also significantly improves its sustainability.
Loyal Murphy was selected as a finalist in the AUsome Science in 60 seconds competition – April 2023
Loyal Murphy, a third-year graduate student in the Wang group, was selected as a finalist for his video summarizing his thesis in a 60-second video to a general audience.
Dr. Wang awarded the Creative Research and Scholarship Award – November 2022
In November 2022, Dr. Wang was awarded the prestigious Creative Research and Scholarship Award, the highest research award at Auburn University. To read more about Dr. Wang and her research, click here.
Wang Group AIChE 2022 Presentations – November 2022
Ali Bradford, a fourth-year graduate student, and Loyal Murphy, a third-year graduate student, presented their research at the AIChE National Conference in Phoenix, AZ.
Ali presented, “A Novel Phenotype of Haloalkaliphilic Methanotrophs Induced By Extreme Oxidative Stress,” which documented her findings on batch experiments conducted using Methylomicrobium buryatense 5GB1 and Methylomicrobium alcaliphilum 20Z cultivated with high concentrations of oxygen. This presentation concluded that preculture conditions have the most significant effect on the future metabolism of the cell.
Loyal’s first presentation, “Fed-Batch Screening of Methanotroph-Algae Cocultures on Anaerobic Digester Effluent for Larger-Scale Wastewater Treatment and Valorization,” covered his results on understanding the growth performance of different cocultures in diluted anaerobic digestate. He also shared his fed-batch, parallel reactor setup that expedited his experiments.
Loyal’s second presentation, “Understanding the Redox Shift in a Clostridium tyrobutyricum Mutant Strain for Butanol Production through Genome-Scale Metabolic Modeling,” outlined how he and former Post-Doc Kiumars Badr retrofitted a genome-scale model for Clostridium beijerinckii to characterize multiple phenotypes of a different species, Clostridium tyrobutyricum, with reasonable accuracy.
Loyal Murphy earns honorable mention for poster presentation at 2022 GERS – October 2022
Loyal Murphy, a third-year graduate student in the Wang group, earned an honorable mention for his poster presentation at the fall 2022 Graduate Engineering Research Showcase (GERS) presented by the Council of Engineering Graduate Students. His poster placed in the top 10 out of over 170 posters given by engineering graduate students across the engineering college.
New lab member Paige Kington joined the group in May 2022
Paige joined the lab after previously working with Wang group graduates Dr. Kyle Stone and Dr. Matthew Hilliard at Danimer Scientific. Welcome, Paige!
New lab member Reza Khorasani joined the group in March 2022
Reza, co-advised by Dr. He and Dr. Wang, joined the group. Before coming to Auburn, Reza obtained his M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tehran. Welcome, Reza!
Dr. Badr’s paper was published in Chemical Engineering Journal (IF 16.74)
Our paper, titled “A novel semi-structured kinetic model of methanotroph-photoautotroph cocultures for biogas conversion”, was accepted by Chemical Engineering Journal, a prestigious journal in the general field of Chemical Engineering. Congratulations to Dr. Badr, who is the lead author of the paper. The paper is available here.
Dr. Wang led the Department of Chemical Engineering to win another GAANN Award – September 2022
Dr. Wang is the PD of a new Department of Education GAANN program awarded to the Department of Engineering. This new GAANN award will fund 5 GAANN Fellows in the PhD program, which emphasizes the recruitment and graduation of female PhDs in chemical engineering.
Loyal Murphy won the Outstanding TA Award – September 2022
Nominated by Dr. Ashurst, Loyal won the Outstanding TA Award for the 2020 Fall semester. Loyal was a TA for CHEN 3600 (Computer-Aided Chemical Engineering), and he assisted students by not only holding standard office hours, but also making videos to assist his students with important MATLAB concepts.
Ali Bradford won the Outstanding TA Award – December 2020
Nominated by Dr. Davis, Ali won the Outstanding TA Award for the 2019-2020 academic year. Ali was a TA for CHEN1100, the introduction course to chemical engineering. During this time, Ali and her fellow TA taught several of the lectures, generated and graded homework, as well as generated and graded the exams for the class. In addition to this, both TAs also held and facilitated the Fuel Cell Car Race for the freshmen class that semester.
New lab member Loyal Murphy joined in November 2020
Welcome Loyal to the Wang Group! Loyal graduated from the University of Notre Dame, with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. Before coming to Auburn, Loyal completed an internship with NREL.
Dr. Wang will spend two semesters with the Dr. Lidstrom Group at the University of Washington
Dr. Wang was selected for the Profession Improvement Leave provided by the Provost’s Office. The award will support Dr. Wang’s sabbatical with Dr. Lidstrom Group at the University of Washington. Dr. Lidstrom is a renowned world leader in methanotrophy.
Ali Bradford joined in May 2019
Welcome Ali to the Wang Group! Ali graduated from Troy University with a B.S. in Chemistry. Before coming to Auburn, Ali completed an NSF research internship in the chemistry department at Auburn University.