Scientific Advisory Board
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Dr. Hildebrand received a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Arizona, and is a Professor in the Marine Biology Research Division at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD. Research in his lab is focused on the unicellular microalgae called diatoms. Diatom cell walls are a composite of organic material and silica, which is structured in a diversity of shapes with features spanning the nano- to micro-scale. Understanding the cell and molecular biology of diatom silica structure formation using genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, transgenic, and high resolution imaging approaches is a major research interest. An ultimate practical goal is to develop diatoms for applications in nanotechnology. Another major interest is in the use of diatoms as a source of lipids for biofuels production, which includes monitoring the lipid accumulation process using microscopy and imaging cytometry, examining mechanisms controlling lipid synthesis and carbon partitioning using transcriptomic and transgenic approaches, and generation and selection of mutants using flow cytometry.
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Dr. Lewis is the Director of Research at the School of Chemical Engineering, University of Adelaide, Australia. In 1999 David commenced a PhD in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His PhD project was focused on the control of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) in drinking supply reservoirs, which was funded by the CRC for Water Quality and Treatment. David became a lecturer in 2002 and setup the Microalgal Engineering Research Group (MERG) with a research focus on water and wastewater quality, commercial and environmental applications for microalgae. From 2002 to 2005 MERG undertook research to optimize media and physical growth conditions for heterotrophic production of specific microalgae for aquaculture feed. This work was undertaken at the laboratory scale to optimize the bio-composition of the microalgae. In 2006 the process was successfully scaled up for commercialization and in 2007 will be trialed at the SA Oyster Hatchery in Port Lincoln. An important component to this work was to apply Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to ensure the commercial competitiveness of the novel process compared with existing large-scale culturing processes used in the aquaculture industry. MERG has also applied LCA’s to winery wastewater treatment processes to assist the wine industry in optimizing process operations and ultimately reduce their carbon footprint. A key research project within MERG is the optimization of microalgal removal from secondary treated wastewater for agricultural applications. This project have direct relevance to the challenge of harvesting microalgae from open ponds and the skills developed in this area will be of immeasurable use to the proposed REDGTF project. Additionally MERG is involved with extraction of compounds from microalgae for commercial application that also has direct relevance to extraction of lipids from microalgae. David is the President, Asia Pacific Society of Applied Phycology and the leader of the Microalgal Engineering Research Group.
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Dr. Jürgen Polle is Professor in the Department of Biology and Associate Director of the Aquatic Research and Environmental Assessment Center at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He received his diploma degree and his doctorate degree in biology from the Georg-August University at Göttingen in Germany. His postdoctoral research was performed from 1997 to 2002 at the University of California at Berkeley. For the past two decades Dr. Polle worked with microalgae. His research interests include fundamental and applied research in the area of algae biotechnology. Dr. Polle studied how to biologically improve the productivity of microalgae in mass cultures. More recently, his research areas include isoprenoid and lipid metabolism in green algae. Dr. Polle’s current research covers a wide range of topics, from isolation and screening of new strains of microalgae to genomics applications. Moreover, Dr. Polle is a renowned expert on the halophilic unicellular green alga Dunaliella. He established the Dunaliella culture collection at Brooklyn College (http://www.dunaliella.org) and he co-edited a book on the alga Dunaliella, which was published in spring 2009.
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