Projects | Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory

As a scientific user facility, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) provides expertise, instrumentation, and resources to 250 projects each year. Current and past projects supported through a variety of EMSL user proposal avenues are publicly searchable on the EMSL website.

Browse current and past research projects supported by the EMSL User Facility.

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Project pages provide details including:

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The EMSL project DOI
Link to project data available in EMSL’s Data Portal
Project type

Vertical Distribution of Aerosol Properties during TRACER

Lead Institution

Washington University in St. Louis

Principal Investigator

Rajan Chakrabarty

Project type

FICUS Research

This project will provide the vertical distribution of physico-chemical properties of individual atmospheric particles collected by ARM’s tethered balloon system (TBS) as part of the TRACER campaign…

Opening the black box of glacial carbon cycling–providing fundamental insight into impacts of a changing climate

Lead Institution

Montana State University

Principal Investigator

Heidi Smith

Project type

FICUS Research

The cycling of carbon on Earth influences atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and is therefore fundamentally tied to climate over long time periods. Roughly 104 petagrams of organic carbon (OC)…

A high-resolution view of the plant–microbe–mineral interactions affecting C-cycling in thawed permafrost soils

Lead Institution

University of New Hampshire

Principal Investigator

Jessica Ernakovich

Project type

FICUS Research

Arctic permafrost soils store approximately one third of the world’s soil carbon, a stock equal to the Earth’s atmosphere. Warming and drying projected over this century will make this vast soil…

Characterization of Organosulfates and Organonitrates in Vertically-Resolved Aerosols over the Southern Great Plains

Lead Institution

University of California, Riverside

Principal Investigator

Haofei Zhang

Project type

FICUS Research

Aerosol processes and interactions with cloud play an important role in the climate system and radiative budget; they are the largest individual source of uncertainty in assessing the Earth’s…

Expanding synthetic biology tools by deeper understanding of Aspergillus niger primary metabolism

Lead Institution

Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute

Principal Investigator

Ronald de Vries

Project type

FICUS Research

Fungal primary carbon metabolism consists of many connected pathways to convert monosaccharides and other monomeric carbon sources. While many of the pathways have been described as single enzyme per…

(Eco)Physiology of methanogens of the phylum Thermoproteota

Lead Institution

Montana State University

Principal Investigator

Roland Hatzenpichler

Project type

FICUS Research

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and its atmospheric levels contribute to regulating Earth’s climate. The majority of biological methane is generated in anoxic environments by methanogenic archaea…

Linking multi-organism-environment interactions across lab and field scales to estimate viral contributions to soil C cycling

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Amy Zimmerman

Project type

FICUS Research

Interactions between soil viruses and their microbial hosts can significantly impact microbial population dynamics, metabolism, and evolution, with cascading effects on soil carbon (C)…

Multiscale multimodal analysis of brown rot fungal decay mechanisms for improved biomimetic lignocellulosic biorefinery processes

Lead Institution

United States Department of Agriculture - Forest Service

Principal Investigator

Joseph Jakes

Project type

FICUS Research

An improved understanding of non-enzymatic brown-rot decay mechanisms in lignocellulosics, such as wood, could inspire improved biomimetic biorefinery processes to elevate lignocellulosic materials…

Functional and structural analysis of microbial expansin-related proteins that
loosen lignocellulosic and chitin fiber networks

Lead Institution

University of Toronto

Principal Investigator

Emma Master

Project type

FICUS Research

This project brings together functional genomics, structural biology, and advanced techniques in material science, to evaluate the untapped potential of microbial expansin-related proteins in the…

The role of microbial predation and cooperation on soil carbon pathways measured through multi-omics

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Bram WG Stone

Project type

FICUS Research

Soil microorganisms drive the decomposition of terrestrial carbon, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere and retaining additional pools belowground. Thus, a critical parameter in climate modeling efforts…

Structural and biochemical characterization of glycosyltransferase 47 family proteins from Spirodela to enable predictive biology

Lead Institution

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Samantha Ziegler

Project type

FICUS Research

Complex carbohydrates comprise the majority of plant biomass and are assembled by large families of glycosyltransferases (GTs) that transfer sugars from activated donors to a wide range of acceptor…

Systems Analysis of Embolism Resiliency in Grasses for Biofuel Production Under Marginal Environments

Lead Institution

Washington State University

Principal Investigator

Andrii Smertenko

Project type

FICUS Research

Production of grass lignocellulosic biomass for biorefining can be significantly diminished by periods of acute high temperature known as heat waves. High temperature disrupts folding of proteins…

Integrating microbial meta-omics, isotopes and methane metabolites to connect belowground microbial processes to aboveground methane emissions in seasonally-inundated Amazonian floodplain forests

Lead Institution

University of Arizona

Principal Investigator

Scott Saleska

Project type

FICUS Research

The seasonally inundated floodplain forests of the Amazon River and its tributaries are iconic examples of ecosystems at the terrestrial-aquatic interface that are dominated by hydro…

Investigating the Effect of Negative Arm Protein Conformations on the Circadian Post-Transcriptional Regulation of Cellulases.

Lead Institution

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Principal Investigator

Jennifer Hurley

Project type

FICUS Research

Biofuel production using cellulases extracted from fungi has the potential to be a major resource to replace fossil fuels. Regulating the synthesis of these and other enzymes is crucial for the…

Vertically and Size-Resolved Chemical Speciation of Aqueously Processed Organic Aerosols

Lead Institution

University of California, Berkeley

Principal Investigator

Allen Goldstein

Project type

FICUS Research

This proposal focuses on improving process-level understanding and model representation of 1) aerosol-cloud interactions and 2) aerosol processes affecting cloud lifecycle, properties, and/or…

Characterization of the Aerobiome during ARM Surface-Atmosphere Integrated Laboratory (SAIL) Campaign

Lead Institution

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Maria Zawadowicz

Project type

FICUS Research

Atmospheric bioaerosols are bacteria, viruses, spores or pollen and their fragments suspended in ambient air, and they can have wide-reaching potential impacts on air quality, climate, and public…

Characterizing primary biological aerosol particles during TRACER

Lead Institution

University of Michigan

Principal Investigator

Allison Steiner

Project type

FICUS Research

Atmospheric organic aerosols represent a large fraction of the total aerosol in the atmosphere and can derive from primary sources emitted directly from natural or anthropogenic processes or be…

Seasonal vertical aerosol profiling for aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions to advance mountainous hydrological process science

Lead Institution

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Allison Aiken

Project type

FICUS Research

Aerosols are central to understanding the water cycle within mountainous regions, but a complete understanding of this role cannot be provided without vertically resolved observations, particularly…

Elucidating temporal-spatial patterns in lignocellulose degradation by morphologically distinct anaerobe gut fungi

Lead Institution

Scotland's Rural College

Principal Investigator

Jolanda van Munster

Project type

FICUS Research

Novel mechanisms to directly disassemble raw, untreated lignocellulose, and dispense the need for pre-treatments are essential to advance biotechnology based on lignocellulose conversion into simple…

Microbial impacts on methane emission hot spots from municipal landfills

Lead Institution

University of Waterloo

Principal Investigator

Laura Hug

Project type

FICUS Research

Landfills are responsible for 14% of methane emissions in the U.S., the third highest man-made methane emission source in the country. In Canada, landfills contribute 20% of emitted methane annually…

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