Professor receives PSU grant

MONT ALTO - Penn State Mont Alto assistant professor, Dr. Linghao Zhong, received a Research Collaboration Fellowship grant from Penn State University. Zhong will be partnering with James Kubicki, associate professor of Geosciences at University Park and member of the Penn State Institutes of Energy and Environment (PSIEE), to research the production of ethanol.

"Currently in the United States, ethanol is mainly produced from corn grains and added to gas we get at the pump station. It helps to reduce our fossil fuel usage a little bit, but that drives food price up, as you have noticed," said Dr. Zhong. "If we have a better understanding of how this protein works, we can modify the protein to function faster. This will help to solve the energy crisis without causing food-versus-fuel competition for corn since the feedstock for cellulosic ethanol would be mainly agricultural wastes such as corn stover, grass, or wood chips." The fellowship supports the development of collaborative research relationships that will attract external research funds.

Zhong joined the faculty at the Mont Alto campus as an assistant professor of Chemistry in 2005. He earned a doctorate degree in Biophysical Chemistry from the University of Rochester in 2003. He also earned both a master's degree in Physical Chemistry and a bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Nanjing University in China. Prior to his appointment as a tenure-track faculty member at Penn State Mont Alto Zhong worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University where he began his research in cellulose and cellulase.