Scientific Advisory Board
David Bransby
Douglas H. Cortez
Arie Geertsema
Leo E. Manzer
G. David Tilman
David Bransby is a professor in the College of Agriculture at Auburn University. He has over 30 years of experience in agricultural research, specializing in grassland (rangeland and improved pasture) management, and 20 years of experience in research and development of energy crops and bioenergy. With over $7 million in grant funds, Dr. Bransby’s research program in each of these fields is the largest of its kind in the United States. These projects include a $2.6 million commercial scale test in which switchgrass was co-fired with coal to produce electricity. He is a valued expert in the fields of agriculture and bioenergy, and has served as an advisor to Senator Jeff Sessions and Congressman Mike Rogers of Alabama – as well as the White House. An author of over 300 professional publications, he is also on the editorial board of the international journal, Biomass and Bioenergy. Dr. Bransby earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in agriculture from the University of Natal in South Africa. He earned his master’s degree in agronomy from the University of Missouri while on a Rotary International Graduate Fellowship, and his master’s degree in market research and advertising from the University of South Africa.
Douglas H. Cortez has over 35 years of international experience with all phases of energy project development in various industries. Most recently, Dr. Cortez was an executive with the Fluor Corporation, the largest publicly held engineering and construction company in the United States. At Fluor, Dr. Cortez contributed to the development of a wide range of energy projects, including petroleum refining, petrochemical, conventional fossil power generation, clean coal conversion, and alternative energy technology development. His experience also includes carbon capture technologies designed to reduce the production of climate-changing gases. Before Fluor, Dr. Cortez was an executive with the Tosco Corporation, where he was responsible for the development of cogeneration facilities at Tosco refineries, the study of technologies for coal and petroleum coke utilization, and the development and licensing of Tosco's shale oil production technologies. He was also a member of the management team that completed the acquisition of refining and marketing assets, as well as private and public oil and gas properties. Dr. Cortez earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and both his master’s and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a registered Professional Engineer in California.
Arie Geertsema is a leading voice in the fields of gasification and coal to liquids. He was Managing Director of Corporate Research and Development and managed a team of over 400 R&D staff at Sasol, the largest and most successful gasification company specializing in coal gasification and gas-to-liquids production. Arie championed Sasol's efforts around coal technology, gasification, gas processing, petrochemical synthesis, biotechnology, and more. At CSIRO, as Manager of Gas Processing, Arie was responsible for developing gas-to-liquid technologies to monetize natural gas from the Northwest Shelf. As Director of the University of Kentucky’s Center for Applied Energy Research and as a tenured associate professor in chemical engineering, Arie focused his talents on catalysis, carbon materials, coal, biomass, and environmental technologies. Arie has a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, an MS in industrial chemistry, and an MBA from Potchefstroom University in South Africa.
Leo E. Manzer is the president of Catalytic Insights LLC, which he founded to provide expertise in problems related to catalytic science and engineering. Before Catalytic Insights, Dr. Manzer had a long and illustrious career at DuPont, where he founded and directed the company’s Corporate Catalysis Center. In this position, he oversaw research programs in homogeneous, heterogeneous, and enzyme catalysis. During his tenure at DuPont, he initiated a program – at the request of Conoco (then owned by DuPont) – to develop technology for the conversion of natural gas to linear alkanes for diesel fuel. This laid the groundwork for Conoco’s world-class position in GTL (gas-to-liquids) technology. For all of his research efforts, he achieved the company’s highest level of professional recognition for scientists and was named a DuPont Fellow. He is the author of over 90 publications and the holder of over 100 U.S. patents. He has also received numerous awards, including the Eugene J. Houdry Award in applied catalysis and three National Awards from the American Chemical Society. Dr. Manzer received his doctoral degree in chemistry from the University of Western Ontario.
G. David Tilman, is Regents’ Professor and McKnight Presidential Chair in Ecology at the University of Minnesota, and is also Director of the University’s Cedar Creek Natural History Area. His research explores how managed and natural ecosystems can sustainably meet human needs for food, energy, and ecosystem services. A long-term focus of his research is on the causes, consequence, and conservation of biological diversity, including using biodiversity as a tool for biofuel production and climate stabilization through carbon sequestration. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Professor Tilman was the Founding Editor of the journal Ecological Issues and has served on editorial boards of nine scholarly journals, including Science. He serves on the Advisory Board for the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a Fellow of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. The Institute for Scientific Information designated him as the world’s most cited environmental scientist of the decade for 1990–2000, for 1996–2006, and for intervening decades.