Project Managers:

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Jean-Michel Ane
Assistant Professor of Agronomy, UW-Madison
Focus Area: Development of a Sustainable Bioenergy Economy
Ane is an expert on plant-microbe symbiotic interactions such as legume nodulation and arbuscular mycorrhiza. His goal is to dissect symbiotic signaling pathways in monocots that control the establishment of arbuscular mycorrhiza but also plant development and plant defense reactions. This research will allow us to improve the sustainability of biofuel production by taking a better advantage of symbiotic associations to reduce fertilizer inputs and pesticide applications.

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.

Christoph Benning
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Michigan State University
Focus Area: Improving Plant Biomass
The Benning lab focuses on the assembly and trafficking of glycerolipids, and the regulation of glycerolipid metabolism in photosynthetic organisms. The goal of this research is to understand the assembly of plastid membrane lipids and of triacylglycerols, which are typical seed storage lipids. Knowledge about lipid metabolisms and its regulation will enable us to design novel biofuel plants that produce oils in different non-seed tissues. These high yielding oil crops will address current yield limitations and will serve as novel feed stocks for the production of biodiesel or jet fuels.

Federica Brandizzi
Associate Professor at the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory,Michigan State University
Focus Area: Improved Plant Biomass
Brandizzi is interested in the cell biology of the plant secretory pathway. A main objective of her research is to understand how proteins traffic between secretory organelles using live cell imaging. The experience of ther lab will be instrumental to follow the dynamics of post-Golgi secretion of cell wall materials.

Phillip Brumm
Chief Scientific Officer, C5-6 Technologies, Inc., Middleton WI
Focus Area: Biomass Processing
Brumm has over 20 years of industrial experience in corn processing, enzyme discovery, commercialization and production, and fuel alcohol production. Working with David Mead of Lucigen, the goal of his research is to identify, characterize, and produce new and novel biomass-degrading enzymes that will significantly reduce the cost of producing ethanol from biomass feedstocks. He is also involved with UW projects to improve the properties of current cellulytic enzymes through genetic engineering.

Michael Casler
Research Geneticist, USDA-ARS, Madison, WI
Focus Area: Improved Plant Biomass
Casler is an expert on agronomics, genetics, and breeding of switchgrass, reed canarygrass, and other perennial grasses for use as bioenergy feedstocks.  His expertise is being applied to the improvement of biomass yield and quality by the use of DNA marker selection methods, improved phenotypic and genotypic selection methods, quantitative genetic methods to dissect phenotypic traits, and the development of heterotic gene pools to exploit hybrid vigor in switchgrass.  Casler is collaborating with GLBRC through a non-funded cooperative agreement between GLBRC and USDA-ARS to conduct translational genomics on switchgrass using maize as a model discovery engine.

Mark Craven
Associate Professor, Department of Biostatistics & Medical Informatics,University of Wisconsin
Focus Area: Enabling Technologies
Craven’s research is focused on developing and applying machine-learning algorithms for the tasks of (i) identifying gene-regulatory elements in genomic sequences, (ii) uncovering and modeling networks of interactions among genes and other cellular components, (iii) modeling, classifying and aligning temporal gene-expression responses, and (iv) annotating high-throughput biological experiments.

Cameron Currie
Assistant Professor of Bacteriology, UW-Madison
Focus Area: Biomass Processing
Currie’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.

Natalia de Leon
Assistant Professor of Agronomy, UW-Madison
Focus Area: Improved Plant Biomass
The biomass quality properties of maize required for silage fed to ruminants have been found to be parallel to the desired traits to be selected for maize to be used as a feedstock for energy bioconversion. Dr. de Leon’s research focuses on the breeding and genetic analysis of maize for silage and biomass production; she will contribute to the evaluation and analysis of phenotypic and genotypic variation for biomass related traits.

James Dumesic
Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, UW-Madison
Focus Area: Bioconversion
Dumesic is an expert on the catalytic conversion of plant compounds into energy products. His lab is researching processes that derive liquid alkalines from carbohydrates in plant biomass, which can then be used to make fuels or byproducts such as high-grade polymers.