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Daniel Obrist, Ph.D., DRI Associate Research Professor in the Division of Atmospheric Sciences is one of this year’s recipients of the NSHE Rising Researcher Award. Obrist uses multi-disciplinary approaches to characterize mercury pollution and chemistry. He’s successfully developed a major research program in this area at DRI, with external research funding totaling $3.3million in the last four years.

Obrist’s research interests include atmospheric chemistry, transport, and biogeochemistry of pollutants and quantification of surface exchange processes of atmospheric constituents between soils, plants, and the atmosphere. A special emphasis includes cycling of mercury in the environment and how global change and disturbances affect these processes.

One of his current projects focuses on the mercury at the Dead Sea-which has implications regarding mercury deposition across the oceans of the world. Through a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, Obrist and Menachem Luria, Ph.D., professor at Hebrew University and an adjunct professor at DRI, are currently working to answers important questions regarding the chemical compounds and pathways responsible for mercury oxidation at the Dead Sea.

Obrist is also working on an EPA STAR grant – highly competitive grant with most proposals having less than a 5% chance of success – to evaluate the impact of climate change on mercury levels and sequestration. In collaboration with DRI’s optical physicist, Hans Moosmüller, Ph.D. he also received a NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant to develop, a novel, state-of-the-art sensor to measure atmospheric mercury at high temporal resolution.

Obrist earned a master’s degree in plant ecology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and a Ph.D. in hydrogeology from the University of Nevada, Reno.

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A consortium of companies announced plans today to develop a plant in the Las Vegas area that would employ about 1,000 people for manufacturing wind turbines.

Once up and running, the 320,000-square-foot plant would be one of the largest manufacturing employers in Southern Nevada and would build upon an already fast-growing local renewable energy industry that so far has focused on solar power.

Today’s announcement was made by private equity firm U.S. Renewable Energy Group (US-REG), Chinese company A-Power Energy Generation Systems Ltd. and real estate development company American Nevada Company of Henderson. Read full story:

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It seems like everyone wants to start a small business or be the budding entrepreneur these days — and many point to the economy as the reason.

Last month, more than 1,000 people attended an entrepreneur fair at the South Point, and dozens attended a similar fair a week later in Henderson.

“The reason there is so much interest now is because of job losses,” said Anna Siefert, operations manager of the Nevada Microenterprise Initiative, a nonprofit organization that funds small businesses up to $35,000 and provides technical assistance. “A lot of people still have their jobs, but don’t know how long they will have it. When people lose a paycheck, they want to be more in control of what they do. This is an opportunity to control their destiny.” Read full story:

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Turning an idea into a company means you have to find brilliant, capable, amazing people and put together a team. And then you have to get everybody on board with the Great Idea. And then figure out how to get there.

You see companies that have the Great Idea but are not able to make it happen. As an example, there were probably about 100 companies that were doing a YouTube-like video sharing service in 2005-07. But the reason YouTube succeeded is it had all the essential elements together: the right team, the right product, the right location in Silicon Valley, the right execution. The entrepreneurs were able to raise the capital they needed to build and scale it. Obviously, it was a good idea, but the combination decided who the winner was. So again, the idea is really just the starting point. Read full story:

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With more than $80 billion already invested in U.S. clean energy development and another $150 billion being proposed, this emerging industry has been tagged as essential to jump-start the economy and create new jobs. Yet significant barriers plague this highly regulated, complex sector that prevent it from making the kind of progress that such high expectations demand.

Knowing that entrepreneurs can accelerate the clean energy revolution if given access to the right networks, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation launched the Energy Innovation Network (www.energyinnovationnetwork.org) at the Energy Innovation Summit co-hosted by the Kauffman Foundation and the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy. The Energy Innovation Network will provide links to technologies, entrepreneurs, finance, buyers and policymakers to make the pathway for energy entrepreneurs more transparent. Read more:

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