University of California, Davis: Chemistry Professor’s Team Wins Share of $20M in UC’s National Lab Funding

Chemistry professor Louise Berben is the lead principal investigator for one of five UC-wide research projects recently awarded nearly $19 million in grants by the UC National Laboratory Fees Research Program.

Louise Berben headshot2
Louise Berben
As announced Jan. 18 by the UC Office of the President, the research program distributed $20 million in all, including two-year in-residence fellowships to seven Ph.D. students, three of them from UC Davis, for research at the Livermore and Los Alamos national labs.

The program is funded by a portion of the fees that UC receives for managing the Livermore and Los Alamos labs on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy. Each systemwide project involves multiple campuses and at least one UC-affiliated national lab.

The Berben team received its grant for “Direct Production of Renewable Fuels and Chemicals From Captured CO2,” an effort to develop new ways to divert CO2 from waste streams and convert it into clean, renewable fuels and other useful products. Collaborating with UC Davis are the Berkeley, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside and Santa Barbara campuses, and the Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore labs.

“The project spans chemistry, chemical engineering and prototype-scale manufacturing with significant opportunities for interdisciplinary training of graduate and undergraduate students,” Berben said.

Here are the other funded projects, including two with Davis campus collaboration:

“California’s Deep Decarbonization Pathways: A Holistic Multi-Layer Assessment” — Lead principal investigator: Rajit Gadh, UCLA. Collaborating sites: Berkeley, Merced, Riverside, Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore.
“Coastal Wetland Restoration: A Nature-Based Decarbonization Multi-Benefit Climate Mitigation Solution” — Lead principal investigator: Adina Paytan, UC Santa Cruz. Collaborating sites: Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Santa Barbara, Los Alamos, Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore.
“Improving Pandemic Preparedness and Health Equity Through Wastewater-Based Epidemiology” — Lead principal investigator: Kara Nelson, UC Berkeley. Collaborating sites: Davis, San Francisco and Lawrence Livermore.
“Multiscale Interaction and Inverse Design of Metallic Meso-Architected Materials for Dynamics” — Lead principal investigator: H Alicia Kim, UC San Diego. Collaborating sites: Irvine, Santa Barbara, Lawrence Livermore and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.