BC Bioenergy Network (BCBN) invites you to attend the online September West Coast Bioenergy Guild with Special Guest Dr. Scott Renneckar, Professor at the University of British Columbia.

About the Special Guest:

Dr. Renneckar is a Professor in the Department of Wood Science at the University of British Columbia where he does research and teaching around sustainable biobased materials. He earned his PhD and BSc degrees from Virginia Tech (USA) in Wood Science, along with a MSc in Wood Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He moved to UBC in 2014, after serving as a professor at Virginia Tech for 9 years. He leads a dynamic team of researchers working on projects of lignin and heteropolysaccharide valorization, biomass fractionation, and nanocomposites.

Dr. Renneckar is a Canada Research Chair in Advanced Renewable Materials contributing to bioproducts research at UBC as theme-lead for UBC’s Bioproducts Institute. Currently, he serves as Chair of the Cellulose and Renewable Materials Division of the American Chemical Society. He serves as the Program Director for the Forest Bioeconomy Sciences and Technology (BEST) degree in the Faculty of Forestry.

About the Presentation: "Tomorrow’s Workforce for the Bioeconomy"

Talent management in any organization is critical for its overall success. Recruiting the right workforce for an organization is challenging, especially in emerging fields, like the bioeconomy where disciplinarity is blurred. A new program at the University of British Columbia (UBC) was created to educate and train students to work in this field. UBC’s Bioeconomy Sciences and Technology (BEST) program enrolled its first class in the fall of 2020 of passionate students hoping to contribute to a cleaner planet by smartly using renewable resources. This talk will highlight UBC’s activities in the area for undergraduates (BEST) and their abilities arising from this program, and also include some snippets of cutting-edge, graduate student-based research from faculty involved in UBC’s Bioproducts Institute. These examples will provide a glimpse of what tomorrow’s workforce in the bioeconomy is capable of.

Website: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAud-2vqzotGdKOuLgrkZe88JgyNVX8mQeZ