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Chris Somerville is Director of the Energy Biosciences Institute and a professor of plant and microbial biology at the University of California Berkeley, and a founder of LS9. Dr. Somerville has pioneered the use of the small mustard plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, as a model species for plant molecular genetics. The areas of his research contributions include plant genomics, lipid metabolism, polyalkanoate synthesis, and polysaccharide synthesis. Dr. Somerville is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Canada. He has received the Alexander von Humboldt U.S. Senior Scientist Award, a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation and the Charles F. Schull Award, the Gibbs Medal from the American Society of Plant Physiology, and the 2006 Balzan Prize in Plant Molecular Genetics. He has been awarded honorary degrees from Queens University, Wageningen University, Guelph University, and the University of Alberta
Dr. Somerville is on numerous editorial boards, and has served on various advisory panels for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Agriculture and other agencies and institutions. He has also served as a consultant to many companies including Unilever, DuPont, Monsanto, Eli Lilly, Pioneer, and Dow. He was a founder of Mendel Biotechnology and served as chairman of the board from 1997-2007. Dr. Somerville received his B.Sc. in mathematics and Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Alberta. | 