Science Café Fort Collins

Second Wednesday of every month
Fort Collins, Colorado

Beet Street Science Café connects the local scientific community with the general public to create a forum of critical thinking and discussion. They are informal and accessible – much more interactive than just a public lecture. The café takes place in a downtown restaurant making it a casual presentation over dinner and drinks. The goal is to engage and educate broad audiences about the incredible discoveries and research going on in our own community.

No cover charge for presentation.

The first Science Café meeting was held at the Engines & Energy Conversion Laboratory (EECL) in January, 2008. At that time, two EECL spinoff companies were working on technologies with the potential for large-scale deployment. These technologies are now moving into the scaleup phase. Since that previous Science Café, Envirofit International has introduced six new stove models, has sold over 100,000 cookstoves, is ramping up production, and has expanded to global distribution. Solix Biofuels has now commissioned a scaleup and demonstration facility in Southwest Colorado, the world’s largest photobioreactor facility for biofuels production. Solix and CSU are members of a $44M algae biofuels research consortium recently selected for funding by the US Department of Energy. This talk provides details of these scaleup activities and also provides an early glimpse at new technologies and projects from the EECL and from CSU’s Clean Energy Supercluster.

Meet Bryan Willson

Dr. Bryan Willson is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University, is Director of CSU’s Clean Energy Supercluster (www.Energy.ColoState.edu) and is Founder and Directdor of CSU’s Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory (www.EECL.ColoState.edu). He is co-founder of Envirofit International (www.Envirofit.org, a non-profit corporation producing technology solutions for poor, underserved populations), Solix Biofuels (www.SolixBiofuels.com, a for-profit corporation developing technology for large-scale algae biofuels production), and other energy companies. In 2009, Dr. Willson was selected by Scientific American for its “Scientific American 10” list of individuals selected for “guiding science and technology to benefit humanity”. He also received the 2009 Maurice Albertson Medal for Sustainable Development, and the 2008 Royal Award for Sustainability from the combined governments of Denmark and Spain.