Breakout Session III
Advanced Dry Mill Technology I - Midwest Consortium
Gene Petersen
Gene Petersen serves as a Project Officer/Manager in the Project Management Center for the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office of the US Department of Energy at the Golden Field Office site. He is currently assigned to work with the Office of the Biomass Program in the area of biomass based fuels, chemicals, energy and products. His efforts are focused on integrated biorefinery projects and bioprocessing technology R&D. He has extensive experience in the biomass field having worked 12 years at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory as a Principal Scientist and Group Manager in the areas of biobased products as alternative feedstocks to petroleum and chemical and biochemical catalysis technologies applied to the chemical and petrochemical industries. He previously worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California on a variety of areas including carbohydrate biochemistry, biochemical engineering for microgravity bioreactors, microbial polysac-charide production and characterization, and unconventional food production for Bioregenerative Life Support Systems. His degrees are in chemistry with applications to biotechnology.
Michael Ladisch
Michael Ladisch is Director of the Laboratory of Renewable Resources Engineering and Distinguished Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering with a joint appointment in Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University and courtesy appointment in Food Science.
Dr. Ladisch’s research addresses fundamental topics in bioprocess engineering as it applies to bioproducts, biorecovery, and bionanotechnology. The work that he carries out with teams of researchers consisting of colleagues, graduate students, and staff is multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional, and addresses properties of proteins and living organisms at surfaces, rapid prototyping of microfluidic biosensors, bioseparations, and transformation of renewable resources into bioproducts. His research has resulted in new industrial bioenergy processes, and systematic approaches and correlations for scaling-up laboratory chromatographic purification techniques to process-scale manufacturing systems. He is currently investigating the scale-down of bioseparations and the rapid prototyping of microfluidic biochips for the rapid detection of pathogenic microorganisms.
He earned his BS from Drexel University and MS and PhD degrees from Purdue University, all in chemical engineering. He has a broad background in bioscience and bioengineering, and has authored numerous journal papers, as well as a textbook in “Bioseparations Engineering: Principles, Practice and Economics” (Wiley, 2001). He previously chaired the National Research Council Committee on Bioprocess Engineering as well as the Committee on Opportunities in Biotechnology for Future Army Applications. Dr. Ladisch was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1999.
Nathan Mosier
Nathan Mosier is an Assistant Professor in Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Purdue University.
Dr. Mosier's research addresses fundamental topics in bioprocessing and bionanotechnology with current projects in bio-processing and enzyme mimicking catalysts for transforming renewable resources to fuels and chemicals, bio-based batteries for electricity generation, and rapid-prototyping of microfluidic biosensors.
He earned a B.S. in BioSystems Engineering from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Biological Engineering from Purdue University. Dr. Mosier was also a Ph.D. fellow in the Innovation Realization Laboratory at the Krannert School of Management.
Mian Li
Mian Li is a Senior Applications Scientist in the Biomass Applications Group at Genencor®, a Danisco Division. He has been working in the renewable energy area for more than 10 years. He has extensive experience in the areas of lignocellulosic biomass and starch conversion technologies, as well as process development and optimization of these technologies. In his current role, he is responsible for developing new enzyme products and processes for lignocellulosic biomass conversion into fuel ethanol. He is also involved in optimizing complex operations including pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation. Prior to joining Genencor’s Biomass Applications Group, Dr. Li worked for Genencor’s Grain Applications Group on corn-to-ethanol conversion, and served as Project Leader in Genencor-USDA’s Hulled and Hull-less Barley to Fuel Ethanol Project.