Frontiers of Science: Prof. Arthur J. Ragauskas

Frontiers of Science

9th April at 12:00
Onsite event
in Presidentti auditorium, BioCity
Spring 2026 program

Prof. Arthur J. Ragauskas, The University of Tennessee, USA
From the forest to fuel tank & 3D printer

Host: Chunlin Xu (chunlin.xu@abo.fi)

Coffee and sandwich served at 11:45, first come first serve!

Six PhD researchers and early-career postdocs are welcome to have a lunch and discuss with Prof. Ragauskas after the seminar. This is a great possibility to learn hosting skills in a friendly environment and create connections for future. Everyone is welcome to join, BioCity Turku will offer the lunch.

If you got interested, please send an email to biocityturku@bioscience.fi

The need for the development of sustainable energy and materials has never been as compelling.  Ragauskas’ research efforts are directed translational biorefining studies to address these needs both nationally and internationally. His vision is to focus on fundamental research that allows him to establish the science underlying the goal of making Clean Energy, Chemicals and Bio-Derived Materials accessible and affordable. This vision is focused on four primary areas, 1) addressing the affordability of biofuels by increasingly focusing on biomaterials and new fuels, 2) expanding our work on identification of gene function in plants from a biofuels emphasis to a material focus that links to the biorefinery, 3) developing new biomass characterization tools, and 4) developing the ‘technology space’ for multifunctional bio-derived systems engineered at the nano-scale to provide unique smart physical properties.

Selected publications

Sustainable recovery of Rare Earth Elements (REEs) from coal and coal ash through urban mining: A Nature Based Solution (NBS) for circular economy. Agrawal R, Ragauskas AJ. J Environ Manage. 2025 Jun;384:125411.

Lignin - A green material for antibacterial application - A review. Das AK, Mitra K, Conte AJ, Sarker A, Chowdhury A, Ragauskas AJ. Int J Biol Macromol. 2024 Mar;261(Pt 2):129753.

Coupling hydropyrolysis and vapor-phase catalytic hydrotreatment to produce biomethane from pine sawdust. Wang J, Jiang J, Meng X, Ragauskas AJ. Bioresour Technol. 2023 Oct;386:129472.

Determination of hydroxyl groups in biorefinery resources via quantitative 31P NMR spectroscopy. Meng X, Crestini C, Ben H, Hao N, Pu Y, Ragauskas AJ, Argyropoulos DS. Nat Protoc. 2019 Sep;14(9):2627-264

General information

• Registration is not needed, participation list is circulated in the audience
• If you are a student and later wish to get a certificate of attendance from the Frontier of Science seminars, print out the seminar diary and after the seminar ask the BioCity coordinator to sign it https://seafile.utu.fi/f/0cd08ce7e61b419b88cb/
• Please note that any audio or video recording of the seminars is strictly forbidden.
• Spring 2026 image credits to Jan Kaslin: Motor neurons (green) and newly produced cells (red) are organized around the central canal (blue cells surrounding channel that crosses the image) in the adult zebrafish spinal cord. Image taken using Leica SP8 confocal microscope.