Jim Sturdevant has joined POET as its new director in POET’s partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy to build a commercial cellulosic ethanol production facility.

According to this POET press release, Sturdevant joins POET’s Project LIBERTY after 28 years at EROS in Sioux Falls, the last 22 of which were spent with the U.S. Geological Survey:

As director of Project LIBERTY, Sturdevant will coordinate all efforts within POET to commercialize cellulosic ethanol. Jeff Broin, CEO of POET, said, “Due to the importance of this project to the future of POET, it is vital to have someone with Jim’s leadership abilities to facilitate collaboration and communication across the organization. There’s hardly a person at POET that isn’t involved in this project and Jim will make sure they’re all reading from the same book.”

The POET cellulosic project gets joint funding from the Department of Energy to convert an existing corn ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa into a commercial cellulosic biorefinery. The plant will be able to produce 100 million gallons of ethanol a year from corn and 25 million from corn fiber and corn cobs. This will boost a bushel of corn’s ethanol potential by 11 percent, get 27 percent more ethanol from an acre of corn, while decreasing the amount of water used in ethanol refining by 24 percent.