Researcher

 

Austin Murphy began working for Idaho National Laboratory as a bioenergy research scientist in November of 2014.  His research has focused on the preprocessing of biomass to be used in biofuels conversion.  Projects that Austin supports involve evaluating biomass storage, developing methods to improve biomass storage performance, and characterizing the handling and flowability properties of various biomass feedstocks.  Austin holds a bachelor’s degree in biological engineering, with a minor in Chemistry from Utah State University. For his senior engineering research and design project he was a member of a research team developing antibiotic-surfactant combinations for antimicrobial applications. Through design iteration, he developed and built a system to continuously monitor and characterize antimicrobial efficacy. He was a finalist in the medicine category of 2013 Nano Utah, Nanotechnology Conference Poster Competition. His experience with the Idaho National Laboratory goes back to 2007, when he performed biofuels research as an intern.