Biofuels expert José Avalos wins Young Investigator Award for biochemical technology

By Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering Communications

The American Chemical Society’s Biochemical Technology (BIOT) division has honored José Avalos with its 2022 Young Investigator Award, recognizing Avalos’s contributions to engineering microbial systems for the production of advanced biofuels and other chemicals that are key to a sustainable future.

Avalos, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, joined the Princeton faculty in 2015. He also holds affiliations in the Department of Molecular Biology and the High Meadows Environmental Institute.

His work focuses on engineering microbes with desirable traits to address problems in clean energy, human health, sustainable manufacturing and the environment. His lab takes a two-pronged approach to research, engineering cells using new technologies developed in the lab while also addressing fundamental questions of protein structure and function, cellular physiology, and metabolism. The two facets of the lab complement and feed each other, as technological developments give rise to new fundamental questions, and basic research opens avenues for new technologies.

The BIOT Young Investigator Award, sponsored by Genentech and given annually since 2006, highlights one young member of the organization who has made outstanding contributions to the field and been an active participant in division activities. The award will be formally presented at the BIOT annual meeting, March 20–24.

This story originally appeared on the Chemical and Biological Engineering website.