Brian Davison is the Chief Scientist for Systems Biology and Biotechnology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is also a deputy in the recently awarded DOE Bioenergy Science Center (www.bioenergycenter.org). He recently served two years as the Director of Life Sciences Division. He was previously a Distinguished Researcher & BioChemical Engineering Research Group leader. In his twenty-one years at ORNL he has performed biotechnology research in variety of areas including bioconversion of renewable resources (ethanol, organic acids, solvents), non-aqueous biocatalysis, systems analysis of microbes (cultivation and proteomics), biofiltration of VOCs, mixed cultures, immobilization of microbes and enzymes, metal biosorption, and extractive fermentations. If there is a theme connecting his work, it is at the interface of solid, liquid, and gas phases between biocatalysts and their environments. This has resulted in 100 publications and six patents. He led a multilab team which received an R&D100 Award for “Production of Chemicals from Biologically Derived Succinic Acid,” in 1997. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, and his B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering, from the University of Rochester. He co-chaired the 15th to 26th Symposia on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals and served as editor of Proceedings in Appl. Biochem. Biotechnol., (1994 – 2005). He was given the 2006 C.D. Scott award by the Society of Industrial Microbiology at the Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Chemical Engineering, at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville .
Notes:
Thanks to Sarah Ashton, Rachel Cook, Lindsey Hannum, James Jeuck, Liwei Lin, James McCarter, Susan McIntyre, and Mark Megalos for providing notes and summaries for presentations.