OUTREACH

CBI is a multidisciplinary center. We have broad and challenging scientific goals. We strongly believe that the only way to achieve these goals is by the inclusion of multiple viewpoints – scientific as well as personal. This is accomplished by creating an environment that values all staff for the uniqueness they bring. This center-wide commitment to the value of diversity and inclusion is in addition to each of our partner institutions’ explicit non-discrimination policies.

Collaboration

CBI seeks engagement from industry. Our goals are in commercialization and in feedback. We seek to assist in moving our innovations into commercialization as well as to gain input of our research focus and innovation targets. We seek engagement with industry, academia, non-profits, and individuals.

• CBI can provide overview briefings
• We can arrange discussions to help ground-truth CBI’s scientific and strategic directions.
• Upon learning your interests, we can provide contacts into our research and staff.
• Interaction with CBI team members including students and post-docs.
• These discussions can lead to formal and informal collaborations.
• Opportunities for mutual sharing and testing of materials, precursors, and fuels.
• Non-confidential technology announcements concerning CBI inventions

If you would like to discuss our industrial engagement or have any questions, please email Renae Speck.

Educational Outreach

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI) has taken a novel approach to bioenergy education and outreach by engaging 4th-8th grade students using CBI developed lesson plans in sustainable biobased energy production and utilization. CBI is currently working with Creative Discovery Museum (CDM) in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to refine, develop and test a Next Generation Science Standards curricula to match evolving CBI goals. This continues and expands the successful BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) “Farming for Fuels” Program. The lessons include basic concepts such as the carbon cycle, lignocellulosic biomass as a substrate for the production of biofuels and bioproducts, genetically modified organisms as well as technical and economic obstacles to a biobased economy.

The CBI/CDM partnership utilizes a novel hub-and-spoke technique by working through regional science centers to gain a better understanding of local needs as well as maximize a direct, hands-on approach.  A series of Science Night, in-class, and distance learning programs are offered to students and the general public through local schools, museums, and community centers. We have worked with hubs at 18 science centers and museums in 14 states (UT, ID, MT, NM, KS, OR, WA, GA, TN, AL, TX, MI, IL, FL and OK). In 2019 this partnership reached ~5,000 more people for a 11-year total of more than 290,000 students, parents and teacher participants in hands-on and distance learning activities. The new (www.learnbioenergy.org) website provides downloadable lessons to ~29,000 users last year. The ongoing program is self-sustaining with direct costs only in training, distance learning, and curricula. These combined distance-learning programs won the International Center for Interactive Learning Pinnacle Award in 2019.

The Creative Discovery Museum (CDM) biofuels websites are linked below:

• www.learnbioenergy.org

Contacts:

Dr. Brian Davison
Chief Science Officer
CBI, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
(865) 574-0955

Dr. Wayne Robinson
Creative Discovery Museum, BioScience Coordinator, CBI Biofuels Coordinator
(423) 290-4641