Energy Company Gives $500-Million Research Grant to Universities.

BP PLC; UNIVERSITY of California, Berkeley; UNIVERSITY of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; LAWRENCE Berkeley National Laboratory; UNIVERSITY & college research; ENERGY industries; GRANTS in aid (Public finance); RESEARCH funding; BIOMASS energy research; BUSINESS partnerships

The article looks at how the international energy company BP has chosen the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to share a grant for research on the development of alternative energy sources, with a special focus on biofuels. The grant will create the Energy Biosciences Institute, which California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, said would be the largest institute in the world dedicated to creating energy from biological sources. Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said partnerships with industry are becoming crucial for university research.