Credit: Bryce Richter / UW-Madison
As seen on Feb. 11, 2014, Shaoqin “Sarah” Gong, a researcher at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID) and associate professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduate student Qifeng Zheng, and Zhiyong Cai, a project leader at the USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, have recently created and patented a new aerogel technology that may offer a cheaper and greener method to absorb oil and heavy metals from water and other surfaces. Pictured here, Zheng uses tweezers to hold a sample of the aerogel that has been used to absorb red-dyed diesel fuel (right), while Gong holds a sample of unused aerogel (left).