Project Managers:

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Ron Raines
Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry, UW-Madison
Focus Area: Bioconversion
Raines is an expert on bioorganic chemistry and chemical enzymology. His research group is developing new and improved methods to convert cellulose and starch into useful fuels.

Gemma Reguera
Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University
Focus area: Bioconversion
Reguera’s research focuses on understanding the adaptive responses of microbes to their natural environment, and identifying novel microbial processes and interactions that can be harnessed to develop biotechnology applications. Her lab is currently studying how Geobacter bacteria colonize surfaces and live as biofilms and how to genetically engineer Geobacter biofilms for applications in bioremediation, nanotechnology and bioenergy.

Douglas W. Schemske
Professor of Plant Biology, Michigan State University
Focus Area: Development of a Sustainable Bioenergy Economy
Schemske studies the ecological genetics of adaption and speciation. His work addresses the ecological factors that contribute to adaptation and speciation, and the genetic basis of these factors. He is also interested in conservation biology, the role of habitat restoration in biofuels production systems and the management of invasive species.

John Sedbrook
Associate Professor of Genetics, Illinois State University
Focus Area: Improved Plant Biomass
Sedbrook is an expert in the area of plant cell expansion and development, with a particular emphasis on the involvement of the plant cytoskeleton. That expertise is being applied toward unraveling key mechanisms of tissue differentiation and secondary cell wall formation in dicots and grasses. The Sedbrook lab is also employing the new model grass Brachypodium distachyon in identifying genes affecting biomass digestibility, with the goal of generating bioenergy crop grasses with improved biomass traits.

Thomas D. Sharkey
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Michigan State University
Focus Area: Improving Plant Biomass
Sharkey is an expert on photosynthetic carbon metabolism and starch metabolism in leaves. The goal of his research is developing ways to increase the starch, an easily degraded polymer, stored in plants for use as biofuels. Knowledge from recent basic research into starch structure will be used to engineer plants in the hope of making a better biofuels source. A second component of the research is controlling carbon export from leaves to optimize yield of desirable products without compromising overall yield. Carbon export from leaves will be manipulated to try to break the connection between carbon storage in leaves and reduced yield.

Michael Sussman
Professor of Biochemistry, UW-Madison
Director, UW-Madison Biotechnology Center
Focus Area: Enabling Technologies
Sussman leads the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center, which pioneers genome-enabled technologies that speed the analysis of plant genetics. An expert on the biochemical and molecular makeup of plants, he led the sequencing of the genome of Arabidopsis, a model plant used in many research projects, and has helped develop core facilities and processes for analyzing biological systems via global gene expression patterns, proteomics and metabolomics.

Scott M. Swinton
Professor of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State University
Focus Area: Development of a Sustainable Bioenergy Economy
Swinton specializes in the economics of agricultural and ecosystem management. The foci of his GLBRC research are 1) to predict how cellulosic ethanol processing technology will affect the production decisions of agricultural and forest managers, 2) to assess how those changed decisions will affect the value ecosystem services from these landscapes, and 3) to evaluate how policy interventions can enhance sustainable management and societal welfare.

Kurt Thelen
Associate Professor, Crop & Soil Sciences, Crop Systems Agronomist Laboratory, Michigan State University
Focus Area: Development of a Sustainable Bioenergy Economy
Thelen’s research program is focused on applied issues pertinent to the North Central Corn-Belt. As a cropping systems agronomist, Thelen has conducted research on a wide range of crop production aspects including: bioenergy crop production, utility and assessment of marginal lands for biofuel crop production; management, landscape and soil affects on biofuel crop quality; development of an NIR calibration equation for quantifying ethanol yield from corn grain; carbon cycling in complete biomass removal cropping systems; integrating canola into Michigan cropping systems; tillage systems, weed control, rotational aspects, in-field plant arrangement, soil variability affects on yield, environmental aspects, and precision agriculture.

James M Tiedje
University Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, and of Crop and Soil Sciences, Michigan State University
Focus Area: Development of a Sustainable Bioenergy Economy
Productive, low cost, and sustainable biofuel crops will require supportive soil microbial communities. This is especially the case for their growth on marginal lands, the most likely to be used for biofuels. Tiedje’s goal is to identify the genetic composition of such beneficial communities and eventually to learn how to manage the soil-plant system to ensure this benefit. Initially Tiedje’s lab will use metagenomics and metatranscriptomics of switchgrass rhizospheres growing in different soils and climatic conditions to determine the gene and expression sets selected by productive plants.

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.