Maureen McCann joined NREL from Purdue University, where she was a Professor of Biological Sciences and Director of Purdue’s NEPTUNE Center for Power and Energy, funded by the Office of Naval Research. Maureen has also served as the Director of the Center for Direct Catalytic Conversion of Biomass to Biofuels (C3Bio), an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science. Within C3Bio, her lab explored synthetic biology and genetic engineering approaches to optimize cell wall and biomass structure for chemical conversion processes. Prior to joining the faculty at Purdue, she was a project leader at the John Innes Centre Norwich in the United Kingdom, a government-funded research institute for plant and microbial sciences, funded by The Royal Society with a University Research Fellowship. She received her undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in Botany from the University of East Anglia. Maureen currently serves on DOE’s Biological and Environmental Remediation Advisory Committee and is President of the American Society of Plant Biologists.