Two University of Vermont professors have been honored with National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Awards for their contributions to science.

Dr. Matthew Scarborough, assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, and Dr. Mindy Morales-Williams, assistant professor in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, join the ranks of over 50 UVM faculty NSF CAREER Award winners.

Created by Congress in 1950, the NSF is an independent federal agency that supports the progress of science, promoting vital basic research. The agency’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program offers the NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their organization. The awards, presented once each year, include a federal grant for research and education activities for five consecutive years.

Food waste into fuel

Dr. Scarborough’s – who started at UVM in 2019 – researches focuses on the application of microbiomes (also known as microbial communities) to protect the natural environment and public health. The NSF awarded Dr. Scarborough’s waste bioprocessing project.

“We're looking for ways to take organic waste – things like food waste and cow manure, two big things in Vermont –  and and we're looking to convert those into something valuable,” Dr. Scarborough said. “The conventional route for doing that is something called anaerobic digestion.”

Anerobic digestion is the process by which microorganisms break down biodegradable material like food waste in the absence of oxygen.

“You basically have a giant large tank called a bioreactor, you feed it with organic materials likes, sometimes a food waste slurry, sometimes brewery waste, sometimes cow manure, sometimes several things mixed together,” Dr. Scarborough said. “A microbial community will break down all this complex organic material that's in it and you'll ultimately end up with something called biogas, which is just primarily a mixture of methane and CO2."

That biogas can then be used in several ways; however, one of the most common ways is to burn it to generate electricity. Biogas can also be converted into pipeline-quality natural gas. The Northeast’s largest anaerobic digester is here in Vermont, at the Goodrich Farm in Salisbury.

Dr. Scarborough’s hopes to promote circular economies and provides tools for rural communities to produce products other than biogas and electricity..

“The goal is to give communities a way to turn some abundant feed stock they have, like food waste, into all the different chemicals and compounds…that a community might need,” Dr. Scarborough said. “We're imagining scenarios where we can have these sort of novel bioreactors in place, producing a variety of beneficial compounds in a reliable way and then ensuring communities that might lack access to, say, palm or petroleum can make what they need to function as a society.”

The CAREER Award will also give Dr. Scarborough the opportunity to engage in community outreach and education.

“I'll be working with 4-H through their existing programs to engage with youth throughout Vermont about how we use microbes to either clean up waste or convert waste into something valuable,” Dr. Scarborough said. “There's a lot of untapped talent in rural areas for helping develop sustainable, circular bioeconomies.”

To learn more about Dr. Scarborough’s work, read his latest publications: Microbiomes for sustainable biomanufacturing, Metatranscriptomic and Thermodynamic Insights into Medium-Chain Fatty Acid Production Using an Anaerobic Microbiome, and Increasing the economic value of lignocellulosic stillage through medium-chain fatty acid production.

Studying the lake at the microscopic level

Dr. Mindy Morales-Williams, an assistant professor at the Rubenstein School, was honored with an NSF CAREER Award for her outstanding contributions and vision for continued research in limnology (the study of biological and chemical features in lakes) and phytoplankton ecology.

“I started my undergraduate career at Miami-Dade Community College and did a lot of different things that weren't science related. I studied art and humanities and I thought I wanted to be a painter or a writer,” Dr. Morales-Williams said. “But after transferring to Florida International University, I took a class in limnology that hooked me. I thought it was fascinating how microscopic algae can alter entire ecosystems in oceans and lakes.”

The NSF awarded Dr. Morales-Williams for her research proposal on predicting algal community responses to disturbance and links to lake ecosystem function. As seasonal patterns in lakes become less consistent with climate change, the predictability of algae has also decreased. Algal communities have significant impacts on ecosystems as they influence carbon cycles and habitat health for other aquatic species.

“One focus on my research is determining when and where blooms happen, if they are increasing, and how is climate change affecting those processes and lakes,” Dr. Morales-Williams said. “The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report highlighted many of the ways lakes are changing in response to climate change, and several of these things are drivers of blooms”

Vermont is no exception to climate change. A recent Vermont Climate Assessment, a report by the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, found that Vermont is getting warmer and wetter: average temperatures have increased by nearly 2°F and precipitation has increased 21% since 1900.

In addition to funding this research in Lake Champlain and four other Vermont inland lakes, the CAREER Award will provide an educational component for undergraduate students in limnology, algal ecology, and ecosystem ecology courses at UVM. They will design experimental tanks on campus to study algae and greenhouse gas flux in a laboratory setting using high-frequency sensors. Dr. Morales-Williams will also support a PhD student and a post-doctoral fellow to complete her research team.

“The grant also funds a new microscopy facility at the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory down on the lake,” Dr. Morales-Williams said. “Right now, we have a great research microscopy facility, but not so great student microscopes. With new microscopes, digital imaging and computers to go with that, we can do more applied biological work with students.”

Ultimately, Dr. Morales-Williams hopes to more accurately predict the biological and chemical processes of lakes in response to increasingly unpredictable climate pressure.

“[The NSF] provides funding not just to answer these really important questions about how lakes are responding to climate change currently,” Dr. Morales-Williams said, “but where do we take that? What’s happening right now and how can we project it into the future?”

Dr. Morales-Williams will also be establishing the first collection of algae at the UVM Natural History Museum’s Pringle Herbarium, the third largest herbarium in New England.

To learn more about Dr. Morales-Williams’ work, read her latest publications: Cyanobacterial blooms in oligotrophic lakes: Shifting the high-nutrient paradigm (co-authored with GLEON collaborators), Eutrophication Drives Extreme Seasonal CO2 Flux in Lake Ecosystems, and The role of organic nutrients in structuring freshwater phytoplankton communities in a rapidly changing world