Aparajitha Srinivasan, a Berkeley Lab-based postdoctoral fellow of the Host Engineering group in the Joint BioEnergy Institute’s (JBEI) Biofuels and Bioproducts Division placed 3rd in the Berkeley Lab Research SLAM competition on September 22, 2022. Srinivasan’s presentation detailed her research on utilizing computational modeling to select the best routes to creating aroma additives.
In its fifth year, the SLAM challenges early career researchers to tell the story of their research to a general audience in just three minutes. Twelve finalists are selected from entries across Berkeley Lab Research Areas.
Jenny Onley, a Sandia-based JBEI postdoctoral fellow in the High Throughput Chemistry group in the Technology division also placed third in the Sandia Lab SLAM with her talk “The High Throughput Search for Enzymes that Turn Tough Plants into Biofuels.” The Sandia SLAM is formatted as a technical showcase and is conducted through video submission. Paul Wolski, another Sandia-based JBEI postdoc from the Microbial and Enzyme Discovery group in the Deconstruction Division also participated in the Sandia SLAM with a talk titled “Lignin Enzymatic Deconstruction for Biofuels and Chemicals.”
As top-three finalists, Srinivasan and Onley will both also represent JBEI at the second annual regional Bay Area Research SLAM on October 20, 2022, competing against the finalists from all four Bay Area National Labs – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and SLAC National Laboratory.