Projects

Composition characterization of ZnO:Cr & ZnO:Co

Lead Institution

University of Washington

Principal Investigator

Bradley Roberts

Project type

Exploratory Research

Thin film samples of ZnO:Cr and ZnO:Co have been grown via the co-sputtering method. Our initial magnetic measurements indicate that ZnO:Cr is ferromagnetic up to and above room temperature which is…

Sunlight exposure replaces the function of microbial enzymes needed to degrade DOM

Lead Institution

Oregon State University

Principal Investigator

Byron Crump

Project type

FICUS Research

About half of the dissolved organic matter (DOM) released from land is converted to CO2 in inland waters (e.g., streams, rivers, lakes), driving a CO2 flux to the atmosphere roughly equal to the net…

Carbon cost of plant-microbe interactions under drought

Lead Institution

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

John Dunbar

Project type

FICUS Research

Plant survival during environmental stress is a major driver of ecosystem carbon (C) cycling, and plant-microbe interactions are central to plant stress survival. However, quantifying how much C…

Bacterial:Fungal Interactions in Soil: Developing a mechanistic understanding of nutrient exchange between soil microbes and the resulting consequences for C/N cycling

Lead Institution

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Patrick Chain

Project type

FICUS Research

Little is known about the interactions between bacteria and fungi and how they function in the cycling of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) in soils. Here we seek to characterize at the molecular level the…

Model Development on Using Clay Membranes for Arsenic Removal from Drinking Water

Lead Institution

University of Missouri - Columbia

Principal Investigator

Baolin Deng

Project type

Exploratory Research

The ability of fine-grained clay minerals to act as semi-permeable membranes and restrict the passage of dissolved solutes is well documented. This unique property of clay, often referred to more…

Discover ectomycorrhizal fungi-triggered macro- and micronutrient reactions and movements: From cell to ecosystem function

Lead Institution

University of Florida

Principal Investigator

Hui-ling Liao

Project type

FICUS Research

As the critical members of forest microbiome, ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) play important roles in forest ecosystems. EMF provide their tree hosts with macro- and micronutrients in exchange for…

Beyond the rhizosphere: Microbial functional traits through the whole soil profile and their response to warming.

Lead Institution

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Eoin Brodie

Project type

FICUS Research

The pathways of carbon transport and loss through and from soils--soil organic matter (SOM) depolymerization to dissolved organic carbon and mineralization to carbon dioxide (CO2)--are fundamentally…

Expanding the functional metagenomics toolkit with CRAGE and CRISPR-Cas9 in taxonomically diverse microbial host chassis

Lead Institution

University of British Columbia

Principal Investigator

Steven Hallam

Project type

FICUS Research

Plant and microbial biomass offers a renewable alternative to energy and materials produced from oil. The industrial scale production or biorefining of sugars and aromatic compounds from biomass…

Gene function discovery in photosynthesis: A multi-omics approach

Lead Institution

University of California, Berkeley

Principal Investigator

Sabeeha Merchant

Project type

FICUS Research

Photosynthesis is the defining characteristic of plants enabling the capture and transformation of sunlight into bioenergy and has been the focus of plant research for centuries. Remarkably, whole…

Model Development on Using Clay Membranes for Arsenic Removal from Drinking Water

Lead Institution

University of Missouri - Columbia

Principal Investigator

Baolin Deng

Project type

Exploratory Research

Use of clay membranes for arsenic removal from drinking water has been explored at the University of Missouri-Columbia, supported by a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation. Arsenic is a…

MBE growth of epitaxial anatase TiO2 (001) on STO(001) on Si(001) and characterization of TiO2 films

Lead Institution

University of Washington

Principal Investigator

Kelli Griffin

Project type

Exploratory Research

The proposed visit to the EMSL facilities at PNNL is for the observation of the oxygen plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy (OPA-MBE) deposition process of epitaxially grown anatase TiO2 on SrTiO3…

Rhizosphere effects on soil organic matter decomposition and microbial activity in a tropical rainforest under drought: unearthing aggregate- to ecosystem-scale contributions to carbon cycling through whole-ecosystem stable isotope labeling

Lead Institution

University of Arizona

Principal Investigator

Malak Tfaily

Project type

FICUS Research

Interactions at the plant-soil-microbe nexus are difficult to track given the complex networks of species and metabolites involved, in addition to the general challenges to studying heterogeneous and…

Prediction of response in soil microbiome carbon utilization to changing moisture conditions

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Jason McDermott

Project type

FICUS Research

The goal of this project is to attain a systems level understanding of the soil microbiome and its phenotypic response to changing moisture through a tractable, spatially explicit examination of the…

Fabrication and Characterization of Functional Nanostructured Materials

Lead Institution

University of California, San Diego

Principal Investigator

Sungho Jin

Project type

Exploratory Research

Recent years have witnessed the rapid progress in the fabrication of functional nanostructured materials. We have succeeded in making a variety of nanomaterials including nanoparticles, multiwalled…

Fabrication and Characterization of Carbon Nanotube-based Composites

Lead Institution

University of California, San Diego

Principal Investigator

Sungho Jin

Project type

Exploratory Research

Recent years have witnessed the rapid progress in the fabrication of functional nanostructured materials. We have succeeded in making a variety of nanomaterials including nanoparticles, multiwalled…

Second Harmonic Generation from Organic Water/Air Interfaces

Lead Institution

University of Colorado

Principal Investigator

Alan Maccarone

Project type

Exploratory Research

Investigate the formation of organic radicals following ozonation of long chain hydrocarbons.

Keystone mutualisms: understanding the role of fungi in organizing soil bacterial food webs

Lead Institution

Stanford University

Principal Investigator

Kabir Peay

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

The goal of our project is to create a predictive understanding of how fungi structure soil bacterial foodwebs. We will do this through an experiment designed around what is one of the fundamental…

Multiscale analysis to explore the molecular landscape of Sorghum bicolor stem over time and space

Lead Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Principal Investigator

Amy Marshall-Colon

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Sorghum bicolor is an important bioenergy crop because it has high nutrient and water use efficiency, and produces a large quantity of biomass that can be processed into ethanol for biofuels. Many…

Multi-watershed perturbation-response traits derived through ecological theory

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

James Stegen

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

This project will transform our ability to understand and predict how the influences of biogeochemical hot spots and hot moments on surface-subsurface systems are altered by disturbance. New theory…

Past is Prologue: Ancient Glass Analogues for the Long-Term Disposal of Vitrified Nuclear Waste

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Carolyn Pearce

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Microbes are ubiquitous in the terrestrial surface and have mastered the art of establishing equilibrium in their localized environment. Samples obtained during an excavation of Broborg, an ancient…