UWF Smart Seminar by Karen Wooley @IHMC

Uploaded February 2023 | Updated September 2026, 10 hours ago

This lecture is part of the IHMC Evening Lecture series.
ihmc.us/life/evening_lectures

Dr. Karen Wooley is looking for the next iteration of sustainable, biodegradable plastics. She’s looking to the insect world for part of the answer. Wooley, who holds the W. T. Doherty-Welch Chair in Chemistry and is a University Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University, spoke as part of the Smart Lecture series at IHMC. Her lecture shared the latest efforts to support the commercial translation of carbohydrate-derived degradable plastics to harvesting of building blocks from insect feedstocks. As scaled-up production of biomass-based biodegradable polymers grows, focus has turned to harvesting the naturally-derived building blocks from black soldier flies, to avoid competition with resources that are important to food, fuel, and construction.

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