Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts

Dr Roman Brunecky

Roman Brunecky is PhD from University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He is a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden Colorado USA. His research activities are focused on the study of cellulolytic enzymes as well as plant cell wall recalcitrance. Notably looking at understanding the meso-scale biomass deconstruction mechanisms of novel natural multifunctional enzymes such as CelA or cellulosomal systems as well as traditional fungal enzyme systems. A major theme is to take the lessons learned from different natural enzyme systems and then using this knowledge to engineer superior fungal cellulases for industrial purposes. Another major theme of his research is also understanding plant biomass structure and using engineered in-vivo enzymes to reduce the recalcitrance of plant cell walls.

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.

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.