Bio-Based Ideas

Today's blog post is not about any bio-based events, I attended. It's not about any great ideas, or moving news either. This time I thought I would just briefly touch upon what happened in the last few weeks. For me the end of graduate school was also accompanied by some anxiety of what would come afterwards. But I also realized that it is an opportunity to make changes for the better in that I have a chance again to pick a direction I like. And so I searched every possibility that would bring me closer to starting a career in the bio-based biotechnology industry. The result? I am very happy to have been selected for a Molecular Biology internship for the next 3-4 months (until the end of November and the beginning of December)! I was told that quite a few people interviewed for this position but did not get it. Not knowing anyone at Amyris previously, I consider myself very lucky. Having been picked for this internship out of all the people is also both a humbling experie...

Recently, NPR radio was talking about a plan of how the military plan might become more sustainable and made the point that the plan was still nebulous apart from some general goals. This reminded me that I still wanted to summarize some of the talks from the SD-CAP 2011 meeting I went to earlier this year. The first talk came from the keynote speaker, General Kamin, who was talking about the NAVI’s efforts on reducing the dependence on foreign oil within the NAVI. He started by pointing out that with a large amount of submarines, operational aircraft, and troops, the NAVI is very energy dependent – most of which comes from petroleum. To put things in perspective, the NAVI uses 25% of all the energy within the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense itself uses 93% of all the energy the government is using. Because the price for energy was low historically, efficiency has not been an issue until now. General Kamin went on to highlight that the Navi has increased it...