Speaker Biography - David B. Layzell, Ph.D, FRSC (Calgary, Alberta)

President & CEO, BIOCAP Canada and Professor, Queen's University, and Incoming Exec Director, Inst. for Sustainable Energy, Environment & Economy, U. Calgary

David Layzell is an expert on the sustainable bioeconomy, a rapidly-growing area of research, innovation and commercialization focused on biologically-based solutions to the challenges of energy security and climate change. From 1998 to 2008, Dr. Layzell served as President and CEO of BIOCAP Canada (www.biocap.ca), a national university research foundation that coordinated, funded and communicated multi-disciplinary research on bioenergy and greenhouse gas emission offsets from agriculture and forestry. Over the past 9 years, BIOCAP leveraged support from governments, leading industries and environmental groups to support university research involving over 250 faculty and 400 graduate students at 38 universities across Canada. His work as a professor of Plant Science at Queen's University has led to more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, 7 US patents, election as a Fellow in the Royal Society of Canada and the creation of Qubit Systems Inc (www.qubitsystems.com), a biological instrumentation company that designs, builds and markets instruments for research and teaching in the biological sciences. In July 2008, Dr. Layzell will take over as the Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy (www.iseee.ca) at the University of Calgary.