Four Scientists Elected to EMSL User Executive Committee
New members begin their three-year terms in October 2024
The Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) User Organization has elected four new members to the EMSL User Executive Committee.
The new committee members, who represent EMSL’s three science areas, are Bin Yang, Marina Kalyuzhana, Rebecca Lybrand, and Devin Rippner. Each will serve a three-year term beginning in October 2024. The User Executive Committee provides advice and recommendations to EMSL’s management team on matters affecting the EMSL users.
Functional and Systems Biology
Bin Yang 
Bin Yang is a professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at Washington State University in Pullman and the Bioproducts, Sciences & Engineering Laboratory at Washington State University Tri-Cities. Yang is also a joint appointee at EMSL.
He is a leading expert in producing biofuels and bioproducts from biomass using biological and chemical processes. Yang’s research focuses on pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, and novel pathways that accelerate the commercial application of biomass processing to cellulosic and lignin fuels and chemicals.
Marina Kalyuzhnaya 
Marina Kalyuzhnaya is the director of San Diego State University’s Cell & Molecular Biology Joint Doctoral Program. She is a former and current user with experience in systems biology of C1-Carbon, functional genomics, and metagenomics.
Kalyuzhnaya’s research focuses on grand challenges in microbiology, including the microbial functional capabilities of extremophilic microbes in nature and the characterization of critical elements for microbial methane utilization.
Environmental Transformations and Interactions
Rebecca Lybrand 
Rebecca Lybrand is an associate professor in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at the University of California, Davis. She is a current EMSL user who is studying the bioweathering of minerals by fungi in soil ecosystems.
Lybrand studies pedology, soil mineralogy, and soil-landscape relationships under contrasting environmental conditions.
Computing, Analytics, and Modeling
Devin Rippner 
Devin Rippner is a research soil scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Horticultural Crops Production and Genetic Improvement Research Unit. In 2021, Rippner received a Large-Scale Research award to use deep learning to identify particulate organic matter in X-ray computed tomography images of soil aggregates.
His research focuses on multi-modal imaging and spectroscopic techniques to build better computer models to elucidate soil and plant processes.