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Steve Thomas served as a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of the U.S. Dept. of Energy. At NREL, he worked for the previous 13 years in the DOE-funded Biomass Program to develop an economically viable process for conversion of lignocellulosic biomass feedstock materials to produce useful renewable fuels and chemicals. His work at NREL spanned several areas, including cellulose enzymology, cellulose genes and heterologous production systems, biomass compositional diversity and its effect on conversion process economics, and biomass conversion systems. Dr. Thomas holds a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of California at Los Angeles. He did his postdoctoral studies in plant lipid biochemistry in relation to chilling tolerance at The Plant Cell Research Institute and ran PCRI’s molecular biology service labs as a staff scientist. Dr. Thomas is also an Affiliate Faculty member of the Biology Department at Colorado State University. | 