2006 Annual Meeting Keynote Speaker

Jay D. Keasling
Division Director of Physical Biosciences
Berkeley Center for Synthetic Biology
University of California Berkeley
2005 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Partnership Grantee

Jay Keasling received his B.S. in Chemistry and Biology from the University of Nebraska in 1986; his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1991; and did post-doctoral work in Biochemistry at Stanford University from 1991-1992. Keasling joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley as an assistant professor in 1992, where he is currently professor. Keasling is also a professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Berkeley, a faculty scientist and Director of the Physical Biosciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Director of the Berkeley Center for Synthetic Biology. Keasling has received several awards, including the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation and the AIChE Award for Chemical Engineering Excellence in Academic Teaching, and has given several award lectureships, including the Inaugural Schwartz Lectureship at Johns Hopkins University and the Allan P. Colburn Memorial Lectureship at University of Delaware. Dr. Keasling's research focuses on engineering microorganisms for environmentally friendly synthesis of small molecules or degradation of environmental contaminants. In particular, Keasling's laboratory has engineered microorganisms to produce polymers and the anti-malarial drug artemisinin and to accumulate uranium and to degrade nerve agents. Keasling is also a founder of two companies, Amyris Biotechnologies and Codon Devices, that have grown out of discoveries from his laboratory.