Leadership

Jay Keasling is also the Philomathia Foundation Chair in Alternative Energy at UC Berkeley. A professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Keasling holds a senior faculty scientist position at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is one of the world’s foremost authorities on synthetic biology.

Diane Pierotti has over 30 years of research program development and management experience. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley where she also spent the majority of her career. At Berkeley, Diane conceptualized, developed and shepherded large-scale initiatives and programs through successful resource procurement, launches and implementation. Notable efforts launched include the National Center for the Workplace, QB3 Institute, the NSF Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (Synberc), and the Center for Computational and Genomic Biology.

Blake Simmons is Division Director of the Biological Systems & Engineering Division for the Biosciences Area at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. A chemical engineer by training, his expertise includes biomass pretreatment, enzyme engineering, biofuel cells, nanomaterials, microfluidics, desalination and silica biomineralization.

Corinne Scown is a Staff Scientist in the Energy Technologies Area and leader of the Sustainable Energy Systems Group and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. At JBEI, she is Vice President of the Life-cycle, Economics, and Agronomy Division. Corinne’s research focuses on modeling the cost and environmental impacts of producing bioenergy and bioproducts.

Henrik Vibe Scheller is a senior scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, an Adjunct Professor with the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California Berkeley, and with the Department of Plant Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. He is an authority on enzymes involved in cell wall biosynthesis.

Aindrila Mukhopadhyay is a Senior Scientist of the Biological Systems and Engineering Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. At JBEI, in addition to her role as Vice President of the Biofuels and Bioproducts Division, Mukhopadhyay leads the Host Engineering group to develop robust scalable microbial strains that show high tolerance and productivity during biofuels and chemicals production.

Paul Adams is a senior scientist and the Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Bioengineering for the University of California Berkeley. He is a leading authority on X-ray crystallography and structural biology.