Speaker Biographies

Green Gasoline: A Renewable Petroleum Alternative From Plants

THE GREEN GASOLINE SPEAKERS

John R. Regalbuto Director, Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program Engineering Directorate National Science Foundation Contact information: 4201 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA 22230 Phone: 703-292-7047 Email: jregalbu@nsf.gov

Dr. John Regalbuto is currently the Director of the Catalysis and Biocatalysis Program in the Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation. He is the lead co-chair of the Biomass Conversion Interagency Working Group, which reports to the National Biomass R&D Board. John's home institution is the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. John's education includes a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M University in 1981, an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 1983 and a Ph.D. from Notre Dame in 1986. Directly thereafter he joined the University of Illinois at Chicago.

John has several hundred research publications and presentations, and most recently has edited one of the few books in his research specialty, catalyst preparation. He has twice served as President of the Catalysis Club of Chicago, and has been active organizing symposia on catalysis for meetings for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the American Chemical Society. John has 3 children and his wife also holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering.

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Clint Chapple Distinguished Professor and Head Department of Biochemistry Purdue University Contact information: 175 South University Street West Lafayette, IN 47907-2063 Phone: 765-494-0494 Web page: http://www.biochem.purdue.edu/faculty/chapple.html

Clint Chapple is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Purdue University, and Head of the department. He earned his B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario Canada, and conducted his post-doctoral work at the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory in East Lansing, MI. His lab's research focuses on the analysis of the phenylpropanoid pathway in plants, with particular emphasis on manipulation of lignin biosynthesis in Arabidopsis and biomass crops. He is a Purdue University Faculty Scholar, the winner of the College of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Award (2001) and Kohl's Outstanding Teacher Award (2008) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Dr. Randy D. Cortright Chief Technical Officer Founder, Executive Vice President Virent Energy Systems, Inc. Contact information: 3571 Anderson Street Madison, Wisconsin 53704 Phone: 608-663-0228 Email: Randy_Cortright@virent.com Web page: www.virent.com

Dr. Cortright is a leading figure in the field of catalytic processing of biomass-derived feedstocks into chemicals and fuels. He is the co-inventor of Aqueous Phase Reforming, the innovative pathway to biofuels and bioproducts used by the BioForming® technology platform. Dr. Cortright's background includes research and development, process design, start-up and operations of large scale industrial catalytic processes at UOP LLC, a provider of petroleum and petrochemical process technologies. He received BS and MS degrees in Chemical Engineering from Michigan Technological University. After leaving UOP, Dr. Cortright earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering, from the University of Wisconsin. In academia, he specialized in catalytic systems for the clean manufacturing of fuels and petrochemicals. Dr. Cortright currently holds seven issued patents and is the author of over 40 technical publications.

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George W. Huber Contact information: 159 Goessmann Lab 686 North Pleasant St. Amherst MA 01003-9303 Phone: 413-545-0276 Email: huber@ecs.umass.ed

George W. Huber is the John and Elizabeth Armstrong Professional Development Professor of Chemical Engineering at University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His research focus is on Breaking the Chemical and Engineering Barriers to Lignocellulosic Biofuels. Three different companies (Virent, KiOR and Renewable Oil International) are commercializing biofuel technologies that George has developed. His discovery of Raney-NiSn catalyst for hydrogen production from biomass-derived oxygenates was named as one of top 50 technology breakthroughs of 2003 by Scientific America. George is currently working with numerous governmental and industrial institutions to help make cellulosic biofuels a reality. George did a post-doctoral stay with Avelino Corma at the Technical Chemical Institute at the Polytechnical University of Valencia, Spain (UPV-CSIC) where he studied bio-fuels production using petroleum refining technologies. He obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison (2005) where he helped develop aqueous-phase catalytic processes for biofuels production under the guidance of James A. Dumesic. He obtained his B.S. (1999) and M.S. (2000) degrees from Brigham Young University.

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