JCCC Students Named U.S. Department of Energy AlgaePrize Champions

August 12, 2025

A Johnson County Community College (JCCC) student organization, the Chlorella Cavaliers, was recently named champion of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) AlgaePrize. They also received the award for best video and a $10,000 prize for their research.

The Chlorella Cavaliers include JCCC students Cheyenne Howard (team captain), Clover Tyler, Helen Lagunas, Will Walker, and Ashton Madoumba, and are led by JCCC Professor of Biology Heather Seitz, Ph.D. The team presented their research at a three-day conference at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, in July. They competed against teams from two- and four-year colleges from across the U.S. A panel of expert judges selected JCCC’s team as one of five champions from the first round of presentations. JCCC was the only two-year college awarded the honor of champion.

The Chlorella Cavaliers and the four other champions then competed in a second round of presentations for the grand champion prize, which was awarded to the Parachlorella Plastic Pals, a team of graduate students from the University of California San Diego in La Jolla, California.

More About Their Project

The Chlorella Cavaliers began their research in the fall of 2023. Seitz invited students from her microbiology, biotechnology, and molecular biology courses to research and develop a novel strain of Chlorella algae. The Chlorella Cavaliers AlgaePrize project sought to introduce a plastic-degrading enzyme to Chlorella to test if it would improve water quality in ecosystems.

Out of hundreds of proposals, the Chlorella Cavaliers were selected as a top-15 finalist for the 2023-2025 AlgaePrize in the Spring of 2024. The students received an $8,000 award for research and $2,000 to cover travel expenses to Golden for the competition weekend.

Throughout the 2024-2025 academic year, Seitz and the students worked to degrade polyethylene terephthalate (type 1 plastic) in bacteria to Chlorella vulgaris algae, which had never been done before. The students successfully introduced DNA and verified that their algae broke down plastic better than normal/wildtype Chlorella vulgaris.

About the AlgaePrize Competition

The 2023-2025 AlgaePrize Competition was sponsored by the DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) and supported by the Algae Foundation and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The competition challenged high school, community college, college, university, and graduate school students from across the U.S. to research and develop technologies in the commercial algae sector.

The AlgaePrize empowers students across the U.S. to highlight the resource potential of algae to produce billions of gallons of economical, renewable diesel and jet fuel each year. Products made from algae are a natural solution to the energy, food, economic, and climate challenges facing our world today. Algae can fuel our vehicles, recycle carbon dioxide, provide nutritious food for humans and animals, and create thousands of jobs nationwide.

This was the second AlgaePrize Competition, and the first that was a two-year research project. The winner of AlgaePrize 2022-2023 was a team of graduate students from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.