Thursday, July 28, 2011

UC San Diego Bioengineering Startup Genomatica Tops New Biofuels Ranking

Renewable chemicals developer Genomatica recently took the #1 spot in the 2011-12 “30 Hottest Companies in Renewable Chemicals and Materials” rankings by BiofuelsDigest. The rankings recognize innovation and achievement in renewable chemicals and materials development. (Read the Genomatica press release on this ranking.)
Genomatica CEO Christophe Schilling earned his Ph.D. in Bioengineering in 2000 at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, under the guidance of professor Bernhard Palsson, the Galetti Professor of Bioengineering in the Department of Bioengineering.
Schilling launched ­Genomatica along with Palsson in 2000. Their aim was to enable the chemical industry, through Genomatica’s novel bio-manufacturing processes, to transform its feedstock base and take the “petro” out of the “petro-chemicals” business. Currently, professor Palsson serves at the chairman of the Genomatica scientific advisory board.
* Genomatica is a 2011 winner of the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (read Genomatica press release), was recently named one of ‘10 Big Green Ideas’ by Newsweek and has been featured on Forbes.com.

* Find links to Genomatica-related stories on this April 5 post on the Jacobs School of Engineering blog.
* The full ranking list is below:

The 30 Hottest Companies in Renewable Chemicals and Biomaterials for 2011-12 are:
1.     Genomatica
2.     Solazyme
3.     Amyris
4.     Gevo
5.     LS9
6.     Dupont
7.     Codexis
8.     Genencor
9.     Novozymes
10.   ZeaChem
11.     Cargill
12.    Cobalt Technologies
13.     Waste Management
14.     Ceres
15.     Elevance Renewable Sciences
16.     Dow Chemical
17.     Enerkem
18.     Coskata
19.     OPX Biotechnologies
20.     DSM
21.     Myriant
22.     Cosan
23.     Mascoma
24.     KiOR
25.     DuPont Danisco
26.     Virent
27.     LanzaTech
28.     POET
29.     Metabolix
30.     Honeywell’s UOP