REU Project

In the search for a renewable fuel source, there has been great consideration given to ethanol derived from woody biomass. There is sufficient biomass available to replace about 30% of petroleum with ethanol. What makes this fuel more sustainable than fossil fuels is that when combusted, it emits non-climate active CO2 and biomass resources are non-depleted when managed sustainability. Currently, Dr. David Shonnard has been researching how to convert the three building blocks of a woody biomass (cellulose, hemi-cellulose, and lignin) into ethanol or by-products that may provide energy to the process. I will be focusing on the degradation of hemi-cellulose to xylose, and finding the parameters that yield the highest amount of the sugar. This, on a larger scale, is the pretreatment stage or the first step of ethanol production.

Personal Information
I am originally from Norfolk, Virginia and am currently a rising senior at Old Dominion University, which is in the same city. My major is in Environmental Engineering and I hope to also graduate with an emphasis in Environmental Management. This past March I went to the Basque Country, which is a region that consists of Northern Spain, and Southern France. There, I took a class in linguistics and learned about Basque language and culture. For the past two summers, I have interned in the Oceanographic Sciences Department at my University where I studied the effects non-solar and non-lunar tidal constituents of the Chesapeake Bay. I even had the opportunity this past November to present these findings at the Mid Atlantic Bight Physical Oceanography and Meteorology Meeting. Outside of school I am involved in the American Society for Civil Engineers, and the Student Activities Council. My interests are traveling, reading (in Spanish and English), listening to various types of music.