Algal bioenergy career

[phycological]

Hello folks,

I was hoping I could get some advice on the best degree selection for working with micro and macro algae cultivation and utilization. I am interested in all of their uses, but especially bioenergy and biofuels, as well as bioplastics and fertilizers. Here is the supply chain that I am imagining:

open ocean seaweed production > biorefinery > energy, fuel, fertilizer > co2 emissions used in algae production > back to biorefinery > bioplastics

This is not the most ideal medium to elaborate these ideas, but I hope you can get the picture. Basically, my overall goal is to create systems of manufacturing that can sequester carbon and provide long term sustainable feedstocks for producing everything we need.

So as you can see, I am not interested in a single field of study necessarily. What I want to do includes biology, chemistry, physics, marine science, and several branches of engineering. So it has been a bit tough for me to figure out exactly where I would like to focus. Having spoken with some folks in the field, they have said that I should focus on environmental science or environmental engineering, and work on taking marine science classes.

Does anyone have any experience or connections in this field that could provide some insight of their own?

Thanks in advance.

[irfuzzbucket]

Hey,

 

I just finished a Zoology B.Sc. and my undergraduate research was about eutrophication, Blue-green algae, and diatoms.

 

Ideally you are looking for an environmental chemistry degree. Most places won't offer this and so you are probably looking at a biochemistry degree. you would then select courses such as environmental engineering, etc. and try to make connections with a professor doing research in that field.

 

I would work backwards because you seem pretty sure of what you want. Look up research in this topic using google scholar and find an author that seems to do work in this area. Find what university they are affiliated with and use that university's directory to get their email. Get in contact with them.

 

For my research I contacted the curator of Canada's Diatom collections. He invited me to use his lab and train me for a weekend - no charge

[phycological]

Thanks for the response irfuzzbucket, that was some very useful info. Just thought I would bump this thread for more responses. I am currently leaning towards what I said in the initial post, focusing on environmental science and perhaps minoring in aquaculture. That way I could have the most broad options available, either as a researcher, or a consultant, or an entrepreneur. I am particularly interested in being an entrepreneur, starting my own seaweed based bioenergy/bioproducts company.

[CharonY]

If you are actually more interested in uses, an engineering degree could be a better fit. The environmental sciences tend to more on either biosystems of impact of human use on them (for example) but does not do a lot in terms of optimization of processes, which is a bit of a limiting factor for algal use.