34 Introduction to Renewable Biomaterials
fermentersareusedtoturnsynthesisgasintochemicalproducts.Synthesisgases
comprise mainly of either CO or CO 2 and H 2 and can come from a variety of gasified
biomass waste streams including forestry and agricultural residues and gasified
municipal solid waste.
1.6 Prominent Scientists Working in this Arena
Joško Bobanovi ́c (physicist) is an investor and helps to finance bio-economical inno-
vation. He joined the Sofinnova Green Seed Fund (France) dedicated to seed activities
in green chemistry and bio-energy in 2010. He is currently a director on the boards
of Metgen, Synthace, and Cellucomp. Joško holds a BSc. in physics from University
of Zagreb, PhD in physical oceanography from Dalhousie University, and an MBA in
finance and marketing from McGill University.
Karl-Erich Jaeger (biologist) is professor for molecular biology at the Heinrich-Heine-
University Duesseldorf (Germany). His research interests focus on bacterial enzymes,
their production, and application in biotechnological processing. Erich Jaeger is vice
chairman of the German bio-economy cluster CLIB2021 and co-founder of evocatal
(Duesseldorf), a start-up specializing on industrial enzymatic catalysis and biomass
transformation.
Jay D. Keasling (biologist) is professor for chemical and bio-engineering at UC
Berkeley as well as director for biophysics at the Lawrence Berkeley National. He is one
of the leading scientists in synthetic biology, systems biology, and environmental
biology. One of his prominent projects is the biotechnological production of
the anti-malarial drug artemisinin in bacteria. Other projects target on first and
second-generation bio-fuel and chemicals. Jay Keasling co-founded Amyris Biotech-
nology in California in 2003.
Ray Miller (chemical engineer) is Chief Business Officer at Verdezyne, Inc. (Carlsbad,
California), a start-up focusing on the development and production of bio-based
chemicals. Before he took that position in 2012, he has been Program Director of
DuPont’s bio-based polymer platform since 2002. This program developed bio-based
PDO, which became one of the first commercially successful biopolymers. Ray Miller
was part of the joint DuPont/Genencor team that received the 2003 EPA Presidential
Green Chemistry Challenge Award.
Marc van Montagu (biologist) is chairman of the Institute of Plant Biotechnology
for Developing Countries (IPBO) of the Ghent University (Belgium), and the president
of the European Federation of Biotechnology. Jozef Schell (scientist; 2003) has been
director at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding in Cologne, professor at the
University of Cologne and Collège de France (Paris). Both being molecular biologists
they realized the potential of the soil bacteriumAgrobacterium tumefaciensto work as
gene vector into plants. In their laboratories, plants have been genetically engineered
first in 1983. Only 11 year later in 1996 transgenic plants started their commercial
success. The contribution of both scientists to modern agriculture has been awarded
with many prizes, among other in 1998 with the World Food Prize.
Christian Patermann (lawyer) is the initiator of the European concept of the
“Knowledge-based Bio-economy” published in Cologne (Germany) in 2004. Since 2004
