Gyoo Yeol Jung is an Associate Professor of Department of Chemical Engineering as well as Head of Interdisciplinary School of Bioscience and Bioengineering, POSTECH of Korea. He received his Ph.D. degree from Seoul National University of Korea and did his postdoc research at MIT with professor Greg Stephanopoulos.
His research is focused on Synthetic Biology and Genetic Analysis System. He published a number of papers in the premier journals including Science and Nature Communications. Dr. Jung is an Associate Editor of Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering and editor of "Electrophoresis" and "Journal of Biological Engineering".
Throughout his career Todd has been committed to developing bioscience technologies that improve human health and environmental sustainability across a broad spectrum of pharmaceutical, food science and renewable fuel and chemical product R&D programs. As Program Head at ABPDU, his role is to lead the development and execution of R&D projects with clients and collaborators. Prior to the ABPDU, Todd spent a year at Impossible Food, Inc., a cutting-edge Bay Area start up in the emerging food biotech space, as Sr. Director of Product Development. Before his time there, Todd progressed through several roles at Amyris, Inc., most recently as Senior Director of Product Management. Todd helped direct strategic collaborations for bio-based fuel and chemical product development and scale-up with the US Department of Energy and as a Steering Committee member for Amyris’ commercial partnerships with Total New Energies and Beta Renewables.
Before entering the renewable fuel and chemical industry Todd was a scientist and project leader at a number of Bay Area pharmaceutical and biotech companies such as Rigel, Exelixis and Acumen Pharmaceuticals. In this role he developed pre-clinical and clinical products in therapeutic indications as diverse as oncology, Hepatitis C virus, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Michael Japs Director, Commercial Technology Development Genomatica, Inc. Michael is a veteran of the industrial biotechnology sector leading development, scale-up, and commercialization of novel processes for the production of chemicals via fermentation. In his current role he directs Genomatica’s Bioengineering Solutions group which leverages Genomatica’s technology platform and expertise to help industrial, food & beverage, agriculture, bio-pharmaceutical and nutraceutical clients develop and improve their products. Target applications include specialty chemicals, nutraceuticals, probiotics, enzymes, flavors and fragrances, cosmetic ingredients, amino acids and more. Michael also leads conceptual process design, economic analysis, and technical business development activities for internal product opportunities. He previously formed and led Genomatica’s process engineering department where he was integral in establishing the company’s core bioprocess engineering capabilities. He is an inventor of Genomatica’s renewable 1,4-butandediol (BDO) process which in 2013 received the prestigious Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award recognizing ‘the most noteworthy chemical engineering technology commercialized in the world during the past two years…’. Prior to Genomatica Michael held several R&D and operations positions at NatureWorks LLC commercializing polylactic acid (PLA). Michael holds a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota.
Yvonne van der Meer has over 15 years of experience in sustainable chemistry. She obtained her Master degree in Molecular Sciences from Wageningen University in 1997 and her PhD degree on the characterization of NiW and CoW hydrodesulfurization catalysts from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands in 2001. She worked at the Dutch research council NWO for six years where she initiated and managed national and European public-private research programs in sustainable and biobased chemistry.
Yvonne joined Maastricht University as an advisor to the Executive Board in 2008. She is co-founder of the Maastricht University Master program on Biobased Materials and two research institutes: Chemelot Institute for Science and Technology and the Aachen Maastricht Institute for Biobased Materials. As of 2015 she is department head Biobased Materials and associate professor Sustainability of Biobased Materials. She is principal investigator “Sustainability assessments of biobased materials” within the Aachen Maastricht Institute for Biobased Materials. She is also chair of the Educational Program Committee of the master Biobased Materials and she teaches bio-based materials and sustainability at bachelor and the master level. In May 2017 she was appointed member of the scientific committee of the Biobased Industries Joint Undertaking.
After graduating with honours from the Physics Department at Moscow State University in 2000, Vladimir Baulin spent 3 years in the Commissariat aÌ€ l’Energie Atomique, Grenoble, France, doing his PhD in theory of polymer physics and received a PhD in Physics in 2003. In 2004-2006 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut Charles Sadron, Strasbourg, France. Dr. Vladimir A. Baulin leads currently a group of Soft Mater Theory at the University Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain which has strong expertise in theory of polymer physics, soft matter theory and biophysics. He is a Coordinator of EU funded Initial Training Network SNAL.
She got the PhD degree in Chemical Engineering and Environmental Technology at the University of Valladolid (2008). She carried out her doctoral thesis in the field of livestock wastes treatment for the removal of organic matter by means of mechanical and photosynthetical oxygenation on the liquid matrix and biogas production on the solid matrix. Previously to that, she worked at the Environmental Engineering Department in the University of Cincinnati (USA) where she also obtained a Master on Environmental Science (2005). During her PhD, she made a stay at Wageningen University (The Netherlands) to work on biogas production using lignocellulosic substrates.
After her PhD, she joined the technological Center ITACyL (Technological Institute of Agriculture of Castilla-León) where she continued working on lab and real-scale plants dealing with livestock effluent treatments. After that, she got a postdoc position at the Biotechnology Lab in the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (LBE-INRA, France) to work on the optimization of biogas production using microalgae. Nowadays, in the Unit of Biotechnological Processes of IMDEA Energy, her research is focused on advanced processes for biofuel production using microalgae as a substrate.
She is co-author of around 20 scientific publications and reviewer of international journals. Additionally, she has been involved in European and national funded research projects, as well as projects with private companies.