Biomass feedstock utilization has the potential to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and improve energy security while decarbonizing our energy needs. Energy crops, short rotation woody crops, municipal solid waste, and agricultural and forest residues are considered promising sources of renewable energy. Computer modeling has proven to be a key tool towards minimizing logistics cost. Designing an efficient and economic biomass supply chain model can be a highly challenging task due to biomass’ bulky nature, feedstock quality variability, uncertain supply conditions, and dispersed geographic location. It requires the integration of several operations including harvest, collection, storage, preprocessing and transportation. Researchers posit that a sustainable biofuel supply chain includes an intermediate storage location to preprocess biomass for longer shelf life and delivery distances. In this presentation, Dr. Jones will discuss different precision agricultural approaches for improving resource use efficiency, quality, profitability and sustainable production of fuels, products and power.

Bio

Dr. Jones is an Assistant Research Professor in the Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department at North Carolina State University with a joint-faculty appointment with Idaho National Laboratory. She is also the developer and director of the new Agricultural Data Science Graduate Certificate at NC State, a graduate faculty in the Operations Research Program, a faculty fellow of the Center for Geospatial Analytics, and a faculty affiliate of the AgBioFEWS Program. She develops data-intensive algorithms and applies diverse modeling and optimization tools to solve large-scale problems that arise in the areas of transportation, logistics, and renewable energy systems. These skills are highly instrumental to tackle the national grand challenge to decarbonize our energy needs while securing a sustainable and resilient supply chain infrastructure. She earned her Ph.D. in Biological and Agricultural Engineering from Texas A&M University, where she was an Alfred P. Sloan Scholar and received a certificate in Business Management. She received her Master’s and Bachelor of Science degrees in Industrial Engineering with an emphasis in operations research and a minor in Mathematics from Mississippi State University. Before this role, she was a postdoctoral associate at Duke University, where she performed quantitative and qualitative research on student interventions and supported programming of educational, career development workshops and community development events for underrepresented undergraduate and graduate students in the biosciences.