We are pleased to support the presence of representatives from the University of Tennessee at the 31st edition of the Aapresid Congress.
We at Byontek are proud to participate in the joint work process between Aapresid and the University of Tennessee bringing science and production closer together by converging the best technologies, experiences and knowledge in a challenging world for agriculture regarding climate and food needs.
Frank, Joe and Deborah will participate in several panels and present the advances led by the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture in soils, environment and data analysis.
Frank Löffler, Ph.D.
Governor’s Chair Professor and Director, Center for Environmental Biotechnology, Department of Microbiology, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science, University of Tennessee – Knoxville, Tennessee
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Biosciences Division – Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Frank Löffler received a B.S. degree in Biology and an M.S. degree in microbiology from the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. He performed his doctoral studies in biotechnology at the Technical University Hamburg-Harburg and received a Ph.D. degree (summa cum laude) in 1994. As an Alexander von Humboldt fellow, he conducted research in the NSF Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University, before joining the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. Since 2010, Dr. Löffler serves as Governor’s Chair Professor at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and he directs the university’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology. The Löffler laboratory explores the physiology, diversity, distribution, and ecology of microbes that control the turnover of nutrients and pollutants, with the goal to harness, manipulate, and predict their functions in both natural and managed habitats. His research has been funded by the DOE, EPA, NIH, DOD, and NSF. He has published over 200 manuscripts and book chapters and has edited a seminal book, Organohalide-Respiring Bacteria. His work has been cited more than 16,000 times and he has an H-index of 67. Dr. Löffler is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Jie Zhuang, Ph.D.
Professor, Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science, Director of FEWSUS, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Dr. Jie (Joe) Zhuang is a professor and graduate program director in Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science and affiliated faculty in Center for Environmental Biotechnology and Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA. He received his bachelor, masters, and doctoral degrees in soil science from Shenyang Agricultural University, China. He is a co-founder and vice director of China-US Joint Research Center for Ecosystem and Environmental Change during 2007-2020. Dr. Zhuang created a US-China 100-PhD Program in the areas of Food, Energy and Environment in 2014 and has recruited more than 40 students for doctoral study in the U.S. With the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation, Dr. Zhuang currently leads a project aiming to develop a global research network for creating transdisciplinary nodes of food-energy-water to support sustainable urban systems (FEWSUS). This research project involves researchers, students, stakeholders, and policy-makers of many countries of the world. Over the past two decades, Dr. Zhuang has worked on a broad range of research projects in the United States, Japan, and China. His research focuses on food-energy-water nexus, fate and transport of contaminants (e.g., viruses, bacteria, colloids, emerging chemicals, radionuclides, and munitions constituents), physical foundation of soil viral ecology, soil carbon management, and soil hydrology modeling. He has served on the editorial boards for eight international journals, published more than 120 referred papers and book chapters, and given more than 40 invited talks worldwide.
Deborah Penchoff, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, and a Fellow of the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee
Dr. Deborah Penchoff is the Associate Director of the Innovative Computing Laboratory, a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, and a Fellow of the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee. She is an expert at leading multidisciplinary research involving applications of High Performance Computing (HPC), data science, and artificial intelligence (AI) with focus on optimization of separations of rare earth elements (REEs) and actinides. She is an elected officer in the American Chemical Society Division of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology (ACS-NUCL), and a member of the American Nuclear Society (ANS), the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She chairs many initiatives focused on accelerating findings through HPC and AI applications and is the editor in chief of Rare Earth Elements and Actinides: Progress in Computational Science Applications. She has a PhD in Physical Chemistry with an Interdisciplinary Minor in Computational Sciences.
You will find the complete agenda of the congress at this link.
