Marcus Foston
Center Director & Associate Professor of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering
Director of Diversity Initiatives
Washington University in St. Louis
- Email: mfoston@wustl.edu
Professor Foston’s research program seeks to develop innovative and novel routes to exploit and utilize lignocellulosic biomass, taking advantage of materials involved in industries such as agriculture, papermaking, and forestry products. His primary research themes are:
- Sustainable conversion of biomass into chemicals using liquid-phase, heterogeneous catalysis.
- Interfacing the catalytic depolymerization of biomass with microbial utilization.
- Understanding how plant cell respond to mechanical stimulus
Guy Genin
Harold and Kathleen Faught Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Department of Mechanical Engineering
- Email: genin@wustl.edu
Research Interests: Guy Genin studies interfaces and adhesion in nature, physiology, and engineering. His current research focuses on interfaces between tissues at the attachment of tendon to bone, between cells in cardiac fibrosis, and between protein structures at the periphery of plant and animal cells.
Fuzhong Zhang
Center Co-Director & Professor of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering
Washington University in St. Louis
- Email: fzhang29@wustl.edu
Fuzhong Zhang’s research focuses on developing synthetic biology tools and systems for the sustainable production of structurally-defined chemicals and high-performance materials. Current research projects include: (1) engineering microbial metabolic dynamics and heterogeneity; (2) engineering metabolic pathways to produce structure-defined biofuels and chemicals; (3) developing microbial factories to produce high-performance materials.