Timothy Donohue

WEI & GLBRC Director, Ira L. Baldwin Professor of Bacteriology

UW Foundation Fetzer-Bascom Professor

College of Agricultural & Life Sciences

The Wisconsin Energy Institute Director, Dr. Timothy Donohue, is Ira L. Baldwin Professor of Bacteriology and UW Foundation Fetzer-Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dr. Donohue is an internationally-recognized expert on bio-and genome-based conversion of renewable resources into valuable products. He is a Past President and current Secretary of the American Society for Microbiology, the oldest and largest biological sciences professional society in the country. Dr. Donohue is an honorary fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology, has served on numerous federal and international advisory panels, and has led large federally-funded cross-disciplinary graduate training programs. Since 2007, Dr. Donohue has served as principal investigator and director of Great Lakes Bioenergy, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science-funded renewable fuels and chemicals research center that has trained some 1000 scientists and engineers, made advances contained in over 200 patent applications and 100 licensed technologies, and provided the scientific knowledge that has formed the basis of five start-up companies.

  • The pathways and networks that microbes use to grow, generate biomass or produce alternative fuels from sunlight or other renewable sources of energy
  • Microbial networks and metabolic and regulatory pathways
  • Genome sequencing, microarrays, proteomics and molecular techniques