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Dr. Bryce J. Stokes, National Program Leader with the U.S. Forest Service, will speak on “Bioenergy Research: Boom or Bust?” at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22, in room 320 of Percival Hall.

With today’s interest in biofuels, it is expected that there will be great opportunities for developing and expanding research and development in all aspects of the production and use of wood for energy. So what are the needs and what are the opportunities? This presentation will discuss some federal research priorities, programs, and plans that have been in place or have been developed in response to the emerging interest in using biofuels to reduce our dependency on oil and carbon emissions. Programs in USDA and the Forest Service will be highlighted with a general discussion of federal research programs, U.S. government coordination in biomass R&D, and the issues/challenges for the use of wood for energy.

Stokes received his BS and MS from Mississippi State University in Engineering and PhD from Auburn University in Forestry. He worked as a Forest Engineer for Weyerhaeuser Company prior to joining the USDA Forest Service in Auburn, Alabama as a Research Engineer. He later served as Project Leader for the Engineering Unit at Auburn and now serves as National Program Leader for Forest Operations Research as part of the Resource Use Sciences Staff in the R&D Washington Office. His 20 years of research focused on harvesting machine and system design and management; biomass recovery and utilization; reducing forest operations environmental impacts;and, specialty systems for pine thinning and wet area harvesting. He currently has oversight for forest operations research and co-oversight in biomass/bioenergy research programs and the Agenda 2020 Sustainable Forestry industrial research partnership. He also had R&D and interagency leadership roles in carbon sequestration and climate change for five years. He currently serves in a support role for the USDA Energy Council and is Past Chair of the USDA Biobased Products and Bioenergy Coordination Council and the Federal Working Group on Woody Biomass Utilization. He is active in the Council on Forest Engineering, Forest Products Society, and the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. He serves as a U.S. representative to International Energy Agency tasks on conventional forestry and short-rotation crops for energy. He has over 140 scientific and technical publications.