NCERC at SIUE Is Leader in Biofuels Research

June 08, 2022

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by Scott Marion (Edwardsville Intelligencer) Nearly 20 years after it opened, the National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville continues to make an impact on a national and worldwide level.

The NCERC at SIUE is a nationally recognized research center dedicated to the development and commercialization of biofuels, specialty chemicals and other bio-based products. It is the only fully integrated research facility of its kind in the world.

The NCERC opened in 2003, but its origins date back to 1992, when the Illinois Corn Growers Association created the concept for an ethanol research pilot plant.

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NCERC’s mission was to work with industry, government, trade associations and academia in commercializing products and technologies to be used in the fuel ethanol space. In its early days from 2003 to about 2009, nearly 80% of its total funding was from public funding, including federal appropriations, state operations dollars and state capital dollars.

“That changed in 2009 when the budgets at the state and federal levels got very tight,” Caupert said. “Since 2009, we have been completely self-supported. Today, 80% to 85% of our total funding and revenue comes in the form of contractual research that we do with companies in the private sector. That revenue is complemented by grants and those grants are complemented by what we call sponsored projects.

“In the last four years, we have successfully lobbied the Illinois General Assembly for $1 million in special appropriations each year. Every dollar comes here and that’s critically important for our self-initiated research and funding the folks that work on that research.”

Caupert noted that as policies, technology and industry have evolved, NCERC has evolved right along with them.

“In the early days of this center, 100% of the work that we did here was on ethanol from corn,” Caupert said. “Today, ethanol serves as the foundation of all the work we do, but in recent years we’ve really built upon that foundation.”

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“The same fermenters we used to make corn ethanol several years ago are being used now to convert sugar into a biopolymer,” Hayes said. “We’re able to do research for companies outside of the corn ethanol industry and across the bioeconomy.”

Since 2003, in support of the corn ethanol industry, more than 70 technologies have passed through the doors of NCERC and are now available in the commercial marketplace, leading to the creation of more than 5,000 jobs and generating in excess of $5.6 billion in annual revenue.

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Facilities at NCERC include a Fermentation Laboratory, Fermentation Suite, Pilot Plant and an Analytical Laboratory.

“One of our taglines is ‘it’s all here under one roof,’ and if your product is almost anywhere in its process, you can do all of your R and D work here. That’s kind of unique when you look at the other R and D fermentation labs across the country. We’re about the only one who can provide you with access to all of these different fermenters.”

Hayes noted that NCERC has visitors and clients from all over the world.

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Caupert added that the NCERC’s clientele ranges from Bay Area startup companies with two employees all the way up to multinational, global Fortune 50 companies.

“They may come here for similar reasons or for very different reasons,” Caupert said. “As a specific example, if you’re a Bay Area startup and you’ve developed a product or technology in a university laboratory, you don’t own the assets to do the validation, prove a concept and scale it. Those startups find their way here because we have assets that they don’t have.

“At the opposite end of the spectrum, if you’re a multinational, global Fortune 50 company that can afford anything, they come here because we serve as that third-party independent facility generating the data that they use to go to market. One of our international clients calls our pilot plant a PDP, which is a process development plant or a process demonstration plant.”

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“The student worker support can come in the form of an internship for someone pursuing a two-year degree in process technology or a four-year degree from SIUE or another neighboring university,” Hayes said.

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... We also have a postdoctoral research fellowship for people who are pursuing a PhD program.” READ MORE

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Excerpt from Illinois Business Journal: On Monday, Nov. 3 (2025), the National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville hosted the NCERC Illinois Ethanol Research Advisory Board Meeting and distributed its annual report to the Board and stakeholders. Chairman of the Illinois Ethanol Research Advisory Board and SIU System President Dan Mahony, Ph.D., welcomed the Board and the partnerships that have contributed to the success of the more than 20-year pilot plant currently under the direction of Interim Director Yanhong Zhang, Ph.D.

“We’re really appreciative of everything that NCERC does, and also for all the great partners we have,” said Mahony. “Everybody that’s here today has contributed to the success we’ve had under Yan’s leadership.”

The full room of attendees and online participants included Illinois Corn Growers Association (IL Corn); Southwestern Illinois Leadership Council; Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (IL DECO); Renewable Fuels Association; SIUE’s academic partners Denise Cobb, Ph.D., provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs, Christopher Slaten, Ph.D., associate provost for Research and dean of the Graduate School, Elizabeth Cali, Ph.D., associate dean for Research and Graduate Studies; state Senator Erica Harriss (R-Glen Carbon); international clients and the NCERC staff.

Associate Dean Cali opened the first session with an overview of the awards team and compliance office and post awards team which manage a sizeable amount of funding.

Cali added, “The graduate school sees that NCERC is poised for growth and well positioned, to meet growing demands and biosolutions needs that are coming in from industry partners, community partners, and federal and state sponsors.”

Before presenting more data recapping FY25 and a forecast for FY26, Zhang took a moment to acknowledge who was not in the room: colleague and mentor, Dave Loos, longtime director in biofuels and research at IL Corn.

Zhang then turned the focus of the meeting to NCERC’s primary purpose: community service, supported in large part by an annual $1 million appropriation from the state of Illinois. Not only is NCERC a leading pilot plant and fermentation lab, but the research facility also hosts frequent tours with visitors who range from high school students to farmers to collaborators.

Funders such as Illinois Corn Growers Association IL DECO, Illinois Corn Marketing Board, Bioindustrial Manufacturing and Design Ecosystem (BioMADE) and SIUE have produced fellowship programs, expanded manufacturing capabilities and a workforce training initiatives that redefines the approach to NCERC’s commercial services.

Front and center in both sessions of the annual meeting were the NCERC staff themselves including NCERC Project Manager Lucas Clayton, NCERC Operations Manager Jared Burns and Visiting Research Fellow Elijah Switzer who detailed NCERC’s partnership with the University of Hawai’i and the research of biomass that supports sugar conversion from feedstocks found in the tropics. Switzer (’22, ’25) received a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry with a minor in Biological Sciences and his MBA with a concentration in Healthcare Administration.

Peter Matlock of The NECERC – UH Project at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo and Colin Walsh of The NCERC – BU Project at Binghamton University both reported enthusiasm for the one-week hands-on laboratory experience their students were able to perform at NCERC on site due to grants provided by BioMADE.

SIUE MBA candidate and NCERC publicity and promotions associate Rebecca Damuth presented plans for upgrades in the areas of marketing and the website, but she also kept the topic of workforce training as the focus.

“Workforce training is in everything that we do. Every project that we work on here, we have students and visiting research fellows working on those projects, and every single grant has some type of workforce training embedded into the project,” said Damuth. “We like to say that we meet learners where they’re at every single level.”

Talking to other attendees is NCERC Interim Director Yanhong Zhang, Ph.D. (Courtesy SIUE)

“One of the things I brought up for FY 26 is how to strengthen our manpower quality. We talked about the fellowship program,” said Zhang. “Potentially we can do more with workforce training. And we got a new team. With people like Rebecca and younger generations of NCERC people, we are very confident that we can look locally for more collaborations.”

Workforce training and technology scale-up grants have had a direct impact on NCERC’s forecast for the second phase of growth. As the team reported, an expansion of the facility’s structure is planned to incorporate classroom training with hands-on learning opportunities including experiential courses addressing biochemical conversion, fermentation and downstream processing.

“Well, today, America’s farm population represents less than half of one percent of the population and less than 1% of college bound students are obtaining degrees in agriculture. For some of you, that is an incredible challenge. I think for us collectively, that is an incredible, incredible opportunity,” said Illinois Ethanol Research Advisory Board member John Caupert, who is CEO of Grain Elevator and Processing Society and NCERC’s previous executive director. “It’s an incredible opportunity to introduce an entirely new demographic, an entirely new percentage of society, to where their food, feed, fuel and clothing actually come from.”

Additionally, Associate Provost Slaten noted that with financial backing, an expansion of the facility in the range of 10,000 square feet would benefit infrastructure, equipment and even more capabilities within the facility.

“As you can tell today, clearly, NCERC makes an amazing impact, both here on our campus with our students, on other campuses across the country–to our region, to the state of Illinois, to the nation and also internationally. With additional support and opportunities, it has significant potential beyond our current capacity,” said Slaten. READ MORE