Biotechnology for Biofuels

Professor Jean Marie Francois

Jean Marie Francois received his PhD in Agronomy and Biological Chemistry from The Catholic University of Louvain La Neuve in 1988. After several post-doctoral periods in USA (North Carolina State University), France (Université de Bordeaux II et CNRS Gif sur Yvette), Brazil (University Sao Paulo) and University Louvain La Neuve, he became full professor at the Institute National des Sciences Appliquées, Federal University of Toulouse in 1993 and reached the exceptional class in 2009. Since then, he created and still manages two research groups (about 25 persons including two associate professors, four senior researchers, 10 technical engineers, four PhD students and five Post-docs) dealing with Integrated Physiology and Functional genomics of microbial systems (PHYGE team) at Toulouse Biotechnology  Institute  and Toulouse White Biotechnology Center.

Dr Michael Himmel

Dr Himmel has 38 years of progressive experience in conducting, supervising, and planning research in protein biochemistry, recombinant technology, enzyme engineering, new microorganism discovery, and the physicochemistry of macromolecules. He has also supervised research that targets the application of site-directed-mutagenesis and rational protein design to the stabilization and improvement of important industrial enzymes, especially glycosyl hydrolases and metabolic pathway enzymes. New areas of interest to his research group include “green electronics” and nanomaterials applications of biomass derived components.

Professor Debra Mohnen

Professor Mohnen received her B.A. in biology from Lawrence University (Wisconsin) and her MS in botany and PhD in plant biology from the University of Illinois. Her PhD research was conducted at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland. She held postdoctoral research associate positions at the USDA's Richard Russell Research Center and at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center (CCRC) in Athens, GA where she won an NIH National Research Service Award for her postdoctoral research. She was appointed to the CCRC faculty in September 1990 and is currently Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and also adjunct faculty member in the Department of Plant Biology and member of the Plant Center at UGA.

Dr Seema Singh

Dr Seema Singh is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. She is the Director of the Biomass Pretreatment and Process Development, and deputy VP of Deconstruction at the DOE funded Joint Bioenergy Institute. She is a biophysicist and material scientist with expertise in biofuels, biomaterials and advanced imaging. Her PhD work was focused on developing AFM for Biological macromolecules and structure-function relationship of transmembrane proteins. She has been awarded multiple awards and recognized by peers- most notably the 2018 DOE Secretary’s Achievement Award to her JBEI Pretreatment team and R&D100 award for developing ‘Super-hydrophobic Coating’. She is passionate about global societal issues and has spent her career working on sustainability- from water desalination to renewable energy, and most recently on developing technologies for plastic deconstruction and upcycling.