Director of the Energy Biosciences Institute at UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National lab and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a new institute initiated with a $500M award from BP (www.energybiosciencesinstitute.org). He is a professor at UC Berkeley and a visiting scientist in the physical biosciences division at LBL. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and patents in plant and microbial genetics, genomics, biochemistry, and biotechnology. His current research is focused on the characterization of proteins, such as cellulose synthase, implicated in plant cell wall synthesis and modification. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, The Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Canada and has received numerous scientific awards including most recently the Balzan Award which he shared with Elliot Meyerowitz (Caltech). He was a founder of Mendel Biotechnology and LS9 Inc., two biotechnology companies with activities in the biofuels area. He was chairman of the board of Mendel from 1997-2007.