Utah State University started elab in 2007 with the purpose of assembling interdisciplinary research teams that crosscut multiple scientific and engineering disciplines both at the University and at partnering institutions.  With an anchoring facility on USU’s Innovation Campus and satellite labs across the remainder of USU, elab seeks to develop solutions to America’s most intractable energy problems through scientific and technological innovation.

We provide a cohesive framework permitting faculty, students, and partnering institutions to focus on contemporary energy-related research issues.  Our first initiative - the model for those to come - is focused on developing enabling technologies leading to a new class of algal biofuels.  The initiative is underpinned by a 5 year, $6.5 million grant from the State of Utah.

Energy innovations are often driven by economic and policy decisions and vice versa, so a secondary role of elab is to provide objective data and analyses on energy-related topics to public and private stakeholders.

Our Mission

To lead "transformational" R&D that helps free America from its addiction to foreign oil, energy price spikes and supply disruptions, and polluted air within a generation.

Outcomes

Our research results in the creation of new knowledge and intellectual property that leads to: 1) "best-in-class" university-based energy research, 2) nationally-recognized thought leadership in important areas of energy innovation, 3) ever-growing involvement in national R&D partnerships, and 4) economic development and "green-collar" jobs in Utah and across the United States.

Goals

elab has developed a series of draft top-level national energy-goals - tied to its mission statement - that provide an underpinning for all of its current and future research endeavors.