Time: 10:00, Dec. 19, 2014

Venue: Conference Room on the 8th Floor of the State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology

Speaker: Yang Yue, Amyris biotechnologies

Title: Amyris: From Biotechnology Startup to Successful Renewable Chemical Manufacturer

Introduction to the Speaker: 

Education

    ？2001-2007 Ph.D., Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, the University of Michigan.

    ？1997-2001 B.S. Biology, Fudan University, P.R.China.

Research Experience

       Scientist | Amyris Biotechnologies | Sep 2011-present

    ？Develop industrial strains for production of biofuel and fragrance products

    ？Metabolic engineering to create Cerevisiae cerevisiae strains to produce biofuel and other products at commercial scale

    ？Led protein engineering projects, and successfully increased the activities of bottleneck enzymes in the pathway.

    ？Employed cutting-edge genome editing technologies to engineer yeast strains, greatly accelerating the development of the new fragrance product.

    ？Championed the development of an automated enzyme evolution platform for Amyris, coordinated a cross-functional team: biology, automation, analytics and bioinformatics.

Other relevant experience

    ？Personnel manager from 2012-now

    ？Supported business development opportunities: generated quarterly technical reports for business partners, performed technical training for a business department intern, real-time translation for Amyris’ business team

        Postdoctoral Research Associate | Michigan State University | 2007- 2011

    ？Identification of a novel gene required for proper chloroplast distribution in plant cells; a process essential for maximizing photosynthetic efficiency.

    ？Determine the DnaJ-like co-chaperon function of ARC6, and characterize its interaction with other proteins in the process of chloroplast division.

        Graduate student | University of Michigan 2001-2007

    ？Cloning and functional characterization of novel enzymes from methyltransferase and esterase gene families in Arabidopsis thaliana

    ？Biochemical and functional characterization of enzymes involved in plant hormone modification and plant innate immunity.