WSU Tri-Cities researcher awarded $500,000 grant to study lignin

In Washington state, WSU Tri-Cities associate professor Xiao Zhang is targeting the use of lignin — a common material that makes the cell walls of plants rigid — to create affordable biofuels and bioproducts.

Interested in the project, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture has granted Zhang, an associate professor in WSU’s Bioproducts, Sciences and Engineering Laboratory, $500,000 to complete the research. The laboratory is part of the university’s Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering.

The project will be conducted in partnership with Xuejun Pan, a professor in the department of biological systems engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.