Dr. Nicole Labbé is an Assistant Professor of Wood Chemistry in the Department of Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

 

She received her B.S. in Chemistry from University of Poitiers, France, M.S. and Ph.D. in Wood Sciences from University of Bordeaux, France. Dr. Labbé’s Ph.D. research focused on developing a new method to measure moisture content in wood and to study wood-water interactions by nuclear magnetic resonance time-domain.

 

Dr. Labbé joined the UT Forest Products Center in October 2002 as Post-Doctoral Research Associate. She addressed the development of high-throughput analytical tools for the rapid assessment of complex materials. Much of her effort has focused on wood and wood based-products and has coupled multivariate analysis of near infrared, mid infrared and laser induced breakdown spectroscopic data to investigate properties and processes. Her research has also involved two-dimensional (2D) infrared correlation analysis.

 

In February 2006, Dr. Labbé became an Assistant Professor at UTK. Her research interest is focusing on understanding properties of biomass –its appearance, properties, and potential for conversion to various products such as fuels, energy and value-added products. She is developing new technologies for pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass for conversion to fuels and chemicals. She is also investigating new biological and chemical tools to provide detailed understanding of plant cell walls, their roles in plant function, and factors controlling recalcitrance and optimization of processes for fermentation of sugars.