Joanna Thielen wins award at

DOE Science and Energy Research Challenge

UST senior chemistry major Joanna Thielen won second place (and $1500) in the energy category at the 2009 Science and Energy Research Challenge.  This event, sponsored by the US Department of Energy, was held this fall at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.  Both Thielen and her academic advisor, Dr. Mithra Marcus, received an all expenses paid trip to the event.  Thielen's research, which focused on finding a time and energy efficient way of converting biomass into a material that could be burned like a petroleum hydrocarbon, was conducted this past summer at Los Alamos National Laboratory.