Efficiently converting plant biomass to sugars is a major challenge to the economical production of bioenergy products. To remove this bottleneck, new treatments are needed for processing feedstocks such as corn stover, switchgrass or wood chips. In this area, the long-term goal of the GLBRC will be to develop new physical and biological ways to process plant biomass. The following researchers are working in this area:

Sandra Austin-Phillips

Senior Scientist, Biotechnology Center, UW-Madison

Focus Area: Biomass Processing
Austin-Phillips’ research focuses on developing transgenic plants that express cellulases and other value-added enzymes that can facilitate the conversion of cellulosic biomass.

Cameron Currie

Assistant Professor of Bacteriology, UW-Madison

Focus Area: Biomass ProcessingCurrie’s research focuses on symbiotic relationships between insects and microbial communities. His work is helping to identify naturally occurring microbial agents that digest cellulosic material, which may lead to the development of novel industrial processes for breaking down biomass material.

Bruce Dale

Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Michigan State University

Focus Area: Biomass ProcessingDale is an expert on making ethanol from cellulose, plant stalks, grass, corn cobs and other woody plant parts and has developed a patented process called ammonia fiber expansion (AFEX), which makes the breakdown of cellulose more efficient, thus tackling one of the thornier problems of producing ethanol. As associate director of the Office of Biobased Technologies, Dale describes his role as providing “technical reality,” stemming from his 30 years of work in biomass technology, to take such technology from the lab to the marketplace.

David Mead

President and CEO, Lucigen Corp.

Focus Area: Biomass ProcessingMead founded Lucigen in 1998, after 20 years of experience in industrial R&D, sales and management at Bio-Rad, Promega, Molecular Biology Resources, Key Scientific and Chimerx. He has developed more than 30 commercially successful products used widely in biological research.

Jonathan Walton

Professor of Plant Biology at the MSU-DOE-Plant Research Laboratory, Michigan State University
Associate GLBRC Director at MSU

Focus Area: Biomass Processing
Walton is a fungal molecular biologist and biochemist who has worked for 17+ years on secreted fungal enzymes that degrade the polymers of plant cell walls. In the GLBRC, he will be working on the development of more efficient enzymes and enzyme mixtures for conversion of lignocellulosic materials to fermentable sugars. He collaborates with Bruce Dale on integrating pretreatments with enzyme mixtures and with Sandra Austin-Phillips on the identification of candidate genes for expression in plants.

View an alphabetical list of GLBRC project leaders here