Agreements
Brazil-EU Workshop: Coordinated Call on Advanced Biofuels
Torbjørn Gjervan (born 1972) is since 2008 Research Manager of the Catalysis Group at SINTEF Materials and Chemistry.
SINTEF is the largest independent contract research organization in Scandinavia having around 2,200 employees. It is a multidisciplinary organization with over 90% of the income coming from bilateral industrial research and from participation in European or national research projects. SINTEF carries out contract research, as well as basic research, mainly in close collaboration with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Torbjørn Gjervan completed his PhD thesis in 2000 at Department of Chemical Engineering, NTNU, entitled “Studies of bimetallic particle formation in reforming catalysts” and started to work as research scientist at SINTEF the same year. He is the author/co-author of several confidential SINTEF reports and scientific publications within catalysis related to oil- and natural gas conversion. In recent years he has been increasingly involved in on biorefinery research for conversion of biomass to valuable products and energy. The Catalysis Group has for more than 30 years been involved GTL R&D in close collaboration with the industry and academia, and has recently been increasingly more involved in BTL R&D.
Torbjørn Gjervan is member of the Norwegian Chemical Society (NKS), and was the leader of the NKS Catalysis Group during 2005 to 2008.
Prof Patricia Thornley has over 20 years experience in bioenergy in the commercial and academic sectors. She has worked on many of the UK's biomass and waste to energy plants, but is now professor of sustainable energy systems at the University of Manchester. She is based in the interdisciplinary Tyndall Centre for Climate Change research and leads the UK's SUPERGEN Bioenergy hub, with responsibility for co-ordinating £12.8M EPSRC funded bioenergy research and representing UK bioenergy research internationally. Her research interests focus on evaluating the sustainability (environmental, economic and social) of bioenergy systems and she has particular expertise on greenhouse gas balances and climate impacts. She works with over 30 industrial partners evaluating bioenergy system environmental, economic and social impacts. She has provided bioenergy advice to the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change, Energy Technologies Institute, Carbon Trust, Government Office for Science and various NGO's in an effort to connect academic understanding of bioenergy sustainability to policy implementation.
Eduardo Falabella Sousa-Aguiar
Chem. Eng., M.Sc., D.Sc., is Full Professor of Chemical Engineering at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro with over thirty nine years of experience in the field of Catalysis and Catalytic Processes. Furthermore, he has been Senior Advisor and coordinator of BTL (biomass-to-liquids) research projects at Petrobras Research Centre. He has authored over 300 scientific papers, 12 chapters of books, 2 books, being the recipient of many industry and scientific awards.
Professor of agronomy, crop science and bioenergy crops at Bologna University. Research fields of interest: lignocellulosic crops for advanced biofuels; biomass supply chain; long term sustainable productivity of biomass crops; oil crops for biorefinery.
Prof. Daniela Thrän studied environmental engineering at the Technical University of Berlin. After completion, she obtained her PhD at the University of Weimar, Germany. Prof. Thrän is an accomplished researcher, having held positions at both the University of Potsdam and Stuttgart. In 2003, she became the Department Head of “Bioenergy Systems” at DBFZ - Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum gGmbH (former: IE Leipzig gGmbH). In 2011, she also took the lead of the newly established department “Bioenergy” at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH (UFZ). Professor Thrän is currently leading a multidisciplinary team of more than 50 scientists, working in a broad spectrum of interests, investigating different national and international research projects focusing on areas of; biomass potentials, bioenergy pathways and their assessment, standardisation of solid biofuels material flow management and sustainability assessment. She is the author of more than 150 publications in relation to the bioenergy and bioeconomy sectors. Since 2011, Daniela Thrän holds the chair “Bioenergy Systems” at the University of Leipzig. Prof. Thrän is a member of the German Bioeconomy Council of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Energy Council of Saxony (Germany). Additionally, she participates in various working groups, both nationally and internationally these include: the German Institute for Standardization (DIN), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), of the International Energy Agency (IEA Bioenergy Task 40) and the European Biofuels Technology Platform (EBTP).
Graduado em Agronomia, com mestrado e doutorado em Ciências Biológicas pela Universidade estadual de Campinas. É Professor Titular pela Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), onde foi diretor do Instituto de Biologia e assessor da Reitoria e da Pró-Reitoria de Pesquisa. Atua na área de Fisiologia Vegetal, com ênfase no metabolismo de lignina. Fez pós-doutoramento na Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Suécia) e no Commonwealth Scientific International Research Organization (CSIRO – Australia). É pesquisador 1A do CNPq e membro da Academia Brasileira de Ciências (ABC). Atualmente é diretor do Laboratório Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia do Bioetanol – CTBE.
Marcos Buckeridge is Associate Professor at the Department of Botany of the University of São Paulo and Director of the National Institute of Science and Technology of Bioethanol (INCT do Bioetanol). From 2009 to 2012 he was also Scientific Director of the Brazilian Bioethanol Science and Technology Laboratory (CTBE), in Campinas. In 2010, Buckeridge was appointed a Lead Authors for the next Intergovernmental Panel of Climatic Changes (IPCC) report (AR5) to be released in 2014. Buckeridge develops research on Plant Cell Wall Architecture, Degradation and Bioinformatics and on the Physiological and Biochemical Responses of Plants to the Environment. His research led to discoveries of mechanisms of responses of sugarcane, sorghum and several tropical species to elevated CO2 and drought. Recently the sugarcane and miscanthus cell wall structures have been described, with possible impacts on the comprehension of cell wall architecture and the Glycomic Code of grasses.
Heitor Cantarella is the Director of the Soils and Environmental Resources Center at the Agronomic Institute of Campinas (IAC) and member of the Coordination of FAPESP Bioenergy Program (BIOEN). His main area of work is soil fertility and plant nutrition, nutrient use efficiency, and environmental impacts of crop production.
Filipe Branco dos Santos was born in 1979 in Lisbon, Portugal. After graduating in Nutrition and Food Engineering from ISCS–Sul, he enrolled shortly at the NMR group of ITQB, before moving to The Netherlands to pursue his doctoral studies with Prof. Dr. Willem M. de Vos and Prof. Dr. Jeroen Hugenholtz. He defended his PhD titled “Vitamin B12 synthesis in Lactobacillus reuteri” in 2008 at Wageningen University. He did a postdoc with Prof. Dr. Bas Teusink at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, working on adaptive evolution of Lactococcus lactis. In 2011, he moved to the Molecular Microbial Physiology (MMP) Group of the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, University of Amsterdam (UvA), working on comparative systems biology of lactic acid bacteria, with Prof. Dr. Jeroen Hugenholtz. Late in 2011, he received a prestigious NWO-VENI grant. In 2012, he led a project on understanding adaptive evolution strategies of microbes in dynamic environments at the VU. In 2013, he became Assistant Professor at the UvA, in the Group of Prof. Dr. Klaas J. Hellingwerf. Currently he leads the MMP Group and his research activities employing Systems Biology are divided between chemoheterotrophs and photosynthetic microorganisms, such as L. lactis and Synechocystis, respectively.
Dr. Eng. Marwen Moussa is Associate Professor (Maître de Conférences) in AgroParisTech (Institute of Technology for Life, Food and Environmental Sciences) in the field of bioprocess engineering and biorefining-green chemistry. He obtained a Ph.D. in process engineering from AgroSup Dijon (University of Burgundy-France) in 2009 and belongs to the INRA-AgroParisTech Joint Research Unit "Food Process Engineering and Microbiology" based in Grignon-France. Being a member of the "BioMiP" team (Bioproducts, food, Microorganisms and Processes), his multidisciplinary research activities deal with integrated membrane-based processes in white biotechnology: in situ product recovery and purification of bioalcohols, biobased organic acids and aroma compounds. The general aim of these activities is the sustainable transformation of agro-resources through the rationalised management of fermentation and separation processes.
Significant projects:
2016-2017: “Development of a new extractive fermentation process for n-butanol production at high concentration, yield and productivity”. 3BCAR Carnot Institute funding; partnership with the Laboratory of Biosystems and Process Engineering.
2013-2017: “Integrated process of glycerol bioconversion and membrane assisted reactive extraction for 3-hydroxypropionic acid production”. Co-funding from the Chair of Industrial Agro-Biotechnology and INRA.
2009-2013: “Bioethanol dehydration using pervaporation and vapor permeation processes”. Co-funding from ADEME, INRA, industrial distilleries and equipment suppliers.
Full Professor in Analytical Organic Chemistry at the Federal University of Paraná (Curitiba, PR, Brazil). B.Sc. in Chemistry (1978-82) at the Catholic University of Paraná, M.Sc. in Biochemistry at the Federal University of Paraná (1983-87) and Ph.D. from the Ottawa-Carleton Institute of Biology, University of Ottawa, Canada (1988-92). Member of the Brazilian and of the American Chemical Societies. H factor of 31 for a total of 2361 citations up until Dec 02, 2015. Research activities focused in biomass chemistry, advanced liquid biofuels, biocatalysis and biorefineries. Associate Editor of Energy & Fuels (ACS Publications). Author of 115 full papers, 20 book chapters, 14 patent applications, and 5 edited books and/or proceedings issues.
Full Professor in Biochemistry of the Chemistry Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IQ/UFRJ). Head of the Enzyme Technology Laboratory and of the Bioethanol Laboratory of the same University. MSc in Biochemistry (IQ/UFRJ) and in Biochemical Engineering (UMIST-Manchester-UK) and PhD in Biochemical Engineering (UMIST-Manchester-UK). Pos-Doc in Molecular Biology in the Department of Biology / MIT, Cambridge-USA.
A major part of her research specializes in the field of Enzyme Technology and Biomass Processing via biotechnological routes. Author and co-author of over 90 refereed scientific papers, plus books, book chapters and patents. Has headed several network research projects in Brazil and in collaboration with Japan and European Countries, involving a network of universities, research institutes and companies.
Since 1993 has chaired or co-chaired the Brazilian Seminars on Enzyme Technology / ENZITEC that takes place every two years, to date. Has been also a member of the expert’s team that has contributed, in 2007, at Federal Government level, to the Brazilian Policy on Biotechnology.
Is the head of the BIOETHANOL LABORATORY (LB) of UFRJ that is a laboratory dedicated to biomass processing via non-acidic and biotechnological routes. The LB is supported by the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology – FINEP with collaboration from the Japan Government and private Brazilian and international companies. More recently, LB has established R&D collaborations with partners from leading Brazilian and International Sugarcane / Energy Industries.