George W. Huber is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His research focus is on Breaking the Chemical and Engineering Barriers to Lignocellulosic Biofuels. George is currently working with governmental and industrial institutions to help make cellulosic biofuels a reality. He is the co-founder of Anellotech a biofuel company focused on commercializing catalytic fast pyrolysis a new technology developed by the Huber research group to convert biomass into gasoline range aromatics. George's discovery of Raney-NiSn catalyst for hydrogen production from biomass-derived oxygenates was named as one of top 50 technology breakthroughs of 2003 by Scientific America. In June 2007, he chaired a NSF and DOE funded workshop entitled: Breaking the Chemical and Engineering Barriers to Lignocellulosic Biofuels (www.ecs.umass.edu/biofuels). This workshop brought together leaders in academia, industry, national labs and governmental agencies to provide a unified national roadmap as to how to make lignocellulosic biofuels a practical reality. George has spoken at two US congressional briefings to discuss the vital role of Chemical Engineering and heterogeneous catalysis in helping to solve our nation's energy challenges. He has authored over 58 peer-reviewed publications including three publications in Science. Since he first started at UMass in 2005, he has received over $13 million in competitive grants to develop new technologies for biomass conversion including the NSF CAREER award. He has been awarded the outstanding young faculty award by the college of engineering at UMass-Amherst. George serves on the editorial board of Energy and Environmental Science and ChemCatChem. He is also on the scientific advisory board of the National Advanced Biofuels Consortium and CatchBio.
Prior to his appointment at UMass-Amherst, George did a post-doctoral stay with Avelino Corma at the Technical Chemical Institute at the Polytechnical University of Valencia, Spain (UPV-CSIC) where he studied bio-fuels production using petroleum refining technologies. He obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison (2005) where he helped develop aqueous-phase catalytic processes for biofuels production under the guidance of James A. Dumesic. The start up company Virent Energy Systems spun out of this research in the Dumesic Labs. He obtained his B.S. (1999) and M.S.(2000) degrees from Brigham Young University, where he studied Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis under the direction of Calvin H. Bartholomew.
In between developing new processes for biofuel production, teaching classes and looking for funding for his research George enjoys spending time with his family. George's wife Leslie is an author (www.thejourneytakers.com) and freelance writer. George and his wife have four children.
· Outstanding Young Faculty Award College of Engineering University of Massachusetts-Amherst 2010
· Armstrong professional development professor 2007-2010
· NSF CAREER Award
· Discovery of Raney-NiSn catalyst named one of top 50 technology breakthroughs of 2003 by Scientific American
