The Big Science Challenge With Biofuel: A Chat with ISB’s Nitin Baliga

by Luke Timmerman (Xconomy Seattle) ...Scientists have been working for a long time on various alternatives to fossil fuels as the fundamental unit of energy, without much success. No one person or institute has all the answers here, but Nitin Baliga, a professor at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, runs a lab that works on a wide variety of relevant research projects with implications for human health, environmental cleanup, and biofuels.
The scientific challenge with biofuels has definitely been top of mind for me the past few weeks, as I get ready to moderate our next event, “Separating Hype from Reality in Alternative Fuels” at the ISB’s new headquarters in Seattle on May 19. Thinking through the challenges the past couple years has been sobering, Baliga says.
“I’ve become smarter about knowing what the challenges are,” Baliga says. “I’m not a pessimist yet, but my optimism is more guarded (than a couple years ago). I know now where it is more likely to work, and less likely to work. I do think there’s enormous potential that’s still really untapped, because we don’t understand how the systems work.” READ MORE