The luncheon speaker at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference focused on managing risk. Paul Willems works for BP Energy Biosciences Institute. He says it’s a collaboration between the University of California, Berkely, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Illinois and BP.
Paul says that their mission is to apply modern biology towards energy problems. The Institute was started in November of 2007 and is currently almost 70 percent staffed. They’ve already committed funding to about 50 projects and programs. Some examples of these programs include feedstock research and the discovery of new enzymes.
One of Paul’s key messages was not to get carried away with problems since solutions will take a while to achieve.
You can listen to my interview with Paul here: [audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/farm-foundation/ff-bio-08-willems.mp3]
You can also download the interview using this link (mp3).