“Research!Louisville is a great opportunity to explore the important role UofL research plays in our day-to-day lives,” said Kevin Gardner, executive vice president for research and innovation. “That work positively impacts our world, from creating meaningful educational experiences and career pathways for students to developing innovative new technologies and companies.”

This year, R!L highlighted 365 abstracts for presentation. Among the scientific poster competition participants represented were masters and doctoral engineering students, NCI R25 undergraduate students, cancer and health disparity Summer Bridge Program students, Brown Cancer Center high school scholars, dental students, masters and doctoral basic science students, medical students, distinction tract medical students, case reports, postdoctoral scholars, research associates, research staff, PharmDs, masters and doctoral public health students, nursing students, medical residents, clinical fellows and faculty.

A full list of award winners and their slide presentations, as well as photos/recording of the closing ceremony are available on the .

Richard Woychik, director of the National Institute of Environmental Science and the National Toxicology Program delivered the keynote address, “Looking to the Future of Environmental Health Sciences.” Woychik oversees federal funding for biomedical research to discover how the environment influences human health and disease. His lecture drew a full house and was preceded with an introduction by UofL President Kim Schatzel.

R!L’s symposium featured seminars, presentations and lectures on a variety of subjects, including nursing research, environmental health sciences, anti-racism research, IRB protocol and more.

The event schedule included a Q&A forum with renowned medical ethicist and author, Harriett Washington. The School of Nursing presented Imelda Wright, assistant professor of nursing, whose research focuses on the effects of perioperative nurse practice and the environment on patient safety in the operating room. UofL’s Social, ����ֱ��al and Behavioral IRB presented a workshop to provide an overview of the UofL SBE IRB and HSPP Office. The IRB also hosted a workshop geared toward biomedical researchers from the UofL Health Sciences and Shelby Campuses. The Research Integrity Office presented Leslie Hollie, a distinguished expert in health care fraud and economic crimes, including grant fraud with a concentration in foreign influence/interference and administrative conflict of interest investigations.

The Center for Integrative Environmental Health Sciences (CIEHS) hosted two forums of presentations by Pilot Project awardees and Research Voucher awardees highlighting their accomplishments from their third-year awards. The Office of HSC Diversity and Inclusion hosted a panel discussion, “The Past is Present: Slavery & Medicine in Louisville History” and an anti-racism program which supports anti-racism research occurring at the University of Louisville which encourages further research aimed at impacting racial inequities.

Juw Won Park, director of the Center for Integrative Environmental Health Sciences Biostatistics and Informatics Facility Core, director of Brown Cancer Center Bioinformatics Core, and colleagues discussed their research interest in bioinformatics and computational genomics which requires high-performance computing. Finally, R!L sponsored a seminar at the Kentucky Science Center for students in grades 7-12 with a biomedical focus. The day also included a “Pulse of Surgery” program, a real-time, open-heart surgery. The full schedule of 2023 events are on the .

The co-chairs of R!L, Jon Klein, vice dean for research, and Chris States, associate dean for research, along with the R!L Steering Committee, look forward to R!L 2024. Look for announcements of dates/agenda in UofL Today.

And it gets sweeter: the process also results in a bio-mass “coal” alternative that burns up to 20 times cleaner than the regular stuff.

The technology was invented at the UofL , biomass conversion and biofuels group in collaboration with Michael Nantz and his team in the UofL chemistry department. The newly-issued patent for the technology is now licensed to Louisville-based startup, BioProducts, which is working to get it to market.

Brian Walsh, the company’s CEO, said the potential environmental benefits of the technology are huge. According to the , burning traditional coal can cause emissions linked to smog, acid rain and other negative environmental and health side effects

“There’s a better way to do it,” he said. “We don’t have to harm the earth. We don’t have to pollute.”

The process isolates xylose – a low-calorie sugar from the biomass. Xylose sugar is widely used as a diabetic sweetener in food and beverage applications. It is also used as a diagnostic agent to observe malabsorption in the gastrointestinal tract.��

Once the xylose is extracted, the team turns the remnant agriculture waste products into a cleaner “drop-in” replacement for coal – a “bio-coal” product.

BioProducts licensed the technology from UofL’s , which handles intellectual property resulting from university research and forges partnerships with companies for commercialization.

“I’m blown away with how well UofL does integrating technology with business leaders,” Walsh said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t see other universities doing that better.”

Dr. Jagannadh Satyavolu, theme leader for biomass and biofuels research at the UofL Conn Center, led this research effort and is the founder of BioProducts. Energy and value creation from waste products are his specialty.��

In the past, Satyavolu has partnered with industry to accelerate the commercialization of multiple bioproducts made from wood and agricultural biomass materials. His bio-coal work has been partly funded by U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities.��Dr. Satyavolu is continuing his bio-coal research work with Oregon Torrefaction LLC, John Day, Oregon and other industry partners.

The process technology behind those products, as with the technology licensed by BioProducts, was — essentially, “roasting” the biomass material to remove moisture and certain volatile compounds. A densification step needs to follow torrefaction to make the product denser, turning it into a coal replacement brick that’s easier to store and ship.

He said the xylose work started about seven years ago, after he took on a pilot project to find new uses for spent distiller’s grain — something Kentucky has in spades — and for corn. Walsh said the product could also create an additional revenue stream for farmers who might otherwise lose money on their agriculture waste.

“We’re always looking for new opportunities to add value and lower the cost of biofuels,” Satyavolu said.