The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) is one of three Bionenergy Research Centers (BRCs) established in 2007 by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. It is the only BRC based at an academic institution.

The BRCs were established to focus the most advanced biotechnology-based resources on the biological challenges of biofuel production. Each center is pursuing the basic research underlying a range of high-risk, high-return biological solutions for bioenergy applications.

Each center represents a multidisciplinary partnership with expertise spanning the physical and biological sciences, including genomics, microbial and plant biology, analytical chemistry, computational biology and bioinformatics, and engineering.

Advances resulting from the BRCs will provide the knowledge needed to develop new biobased products, methods, and tools that the emerging biofuel industry can use. All three centers are working collaboratively to develop a new generation of biofuels.

In addition to the GLBRC, the other two DOE Bioenergy Research Centers are:

The BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) is led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) is led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California.