Organizing Committee Member
Nhuan (John) Nghiem
Lead Scientist
Sustainable Biofuels and Co-products Research Unit
USA
Biography
Dr. Nhuan (John) Nghiem holds a Masters degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of New South Wales and a PhD also in Chemical Engineering from Louisiana State University. He has more than 30 years of experience in industrial and government research laboratories. His past and current research activities focused on development of commercially feasible bioprocesses for production of fuels and chemicals from renewable resources. While at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) he was a member of the team consisting of researchers from several U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratories and an industrial partner that developed and patented the technology for biological production of succinic acid by genetically engineered Escherichia coli strains in a two-stage fermentation process. The technology won one of the R&D 100 awards in 1997. He currently is a Lead Scientist in the Sustainable Biofuels and Co-products Research Unit at the Eastern Regional Research Center of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, where he is leading the effort to convert all components of the sorghum plant to fuels and industrial chemicals.
Research Area
Dr. Nghiem’s current interests include pretreatment and subsequent conversion of lignocellulosic biomass feedstocks to fuels and chemicals, and capture and use of fermentation-derived carbon dioxide as feedstock in bioconversion processes.