Blake Simmons

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Blake Simmons

Dr. Blake Simmons is the Director of the Biological Systems and Engineering Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Tulane University in 2001. Prior to joining Berkeley Lab in 2016 he was at Sandia National Laboratories for 15 years. He currently serves as the Chief Science and Technology Officer and Vice-President of the Deconstruction Division at the Joint BioEnergy Institute, a DOE Office of Science funded project tasked with the development and realization of next-generation “drop-in” biofuels and bioadvantaged bioproducts produced from the conversion of sustainable, non-food lignocellulosic biomass.

Projects in the Agile BioFoundry

  • Project management
  • Project integration
  • Industry outreach

Featured Publications

Inge Kjærbølling, Tammi C Vesth, Jens Christian Frisvad, Jane L Nybo, Sebastian Theobald, Alan Kuo, Paul Bowyer, Yudai Matsuda, Stephen Mondo, Ellen K Lyhne, Martin E Kogle, Alicia Clum, Anna M. Lipzen, Asaf A. Salamov, Chew Yee Ngan, Christopher G. Daum, Jennifer Chiniquy, Kerrie W. Barry, Kurt M. LaButti, Sajeet Haridas, Blake A Simmons, Jon Karl Magnuson, Uffe H. Mortensen, Thomas O. Larsen, Igor V. Grigoriev, Scott E Baker, Mikael R. Andersen, Linking secondary metabolites to gene clusters through genome sequencing of six diverse Aspergillus species, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – USA, published online January 9, 2018, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1715954115

Neupane, Binod; Konda, N.V.S.N. Murthy; Singh, Seema; Simmons, Blake A.; Scown, Corinne, Life-Cycle Greenhouse Gas- and Water-Intensity of Cellulosic Biofuel Production Using Cholinium Lysinate Ionic Liquid Pretreatment, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, online September 13, 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b02116

Dutta, Tanmoy; Isern, Nancy; Sun, Jian; Wang, Eileen; Hull, Sarah; Cort, John; Simmons, Blake A.; Singh, Seema, A Survey of Lignin-Structure Changes and Depolymerization during Ionic Liquid Pretreatment, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, online September 6, 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b02123.

Sebastian Kolinko, Yu-Wei Wu, Firehiwot Tachea,Evelyn Denzel, Jennifer Hiras, Raphael Gabriel, Nora Bäcker, Leanne Jade Chan, Stephanie A. Eichorst, Dario Frey, Qiushi Chen, Parastoo Azadi, Paul D. Adams, Todd R. Pray, Deepti Tanjore, Christopher J. Petzold, John M. Gladden, Blake A. Simmons, Steven W. Singer, A Bacterial Pioneer Produces Cellulase Complexes that Persist through Community Succession, Nature Microbiology, November 2017, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-017-0052-z