Microbes, Energy and the Environment
To advance the microbial sciences in energy and the environment now and in the future, ASM will advocate for the following:
- Implementation of policies that facilitate the translation of research into scalable engineering and environmental mechanisms that use microbes to solve energy and environmental problems, and to meet challenges we face in the 21st Century such as climate change.
- Robust, sustained investment in publicly-funded basic and translational research in the environmental and energy fields through multiple federal agencies, which is critical to advancing this important area of the microbial sciences.
- Deployment of effective communication and engagement strategies to convey the importance of the microbial sciences to the natural and built environments, and to climate change and alternative energy sources.
- Policy interventions to reduce exposure to harmful microbes and decrease degradation of environments that host beneficial microbes.
- The identification and development of infrastructural resources, improved data collection and curation, and the development of empirical, computational and mechanistic modeling tools to improve understanding, prediction and management.
