Carinata Biomaterials summit

Dr. Valerie Sarisky-Reed is the Acting Director of the Bioenergy Technologies Office in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). In this role, she manages efforts to improve performance, lower costs and accelerate market entry of bioenergy technologies. She assists in overseeing strategic planning to meet aggressive goals covered by the BETO R&D budget of approximately $250M annually, working with DOE’s national laboratories, academia, and industry.

She has more than 28 years of experience in addressing energy and environmental issues faced by the United States and globally. In addition to her programmatic activities, she is a founding member of the Metabolic Engineering Working Group (1995-2005), leads the Operations Committee of the Interagency Biomass Research and Development Board, and is a government subject matter expert within the USDRIVE partnership. In addition, she spent two years serving under the Chief Scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, helping to build bridges between DOE and USDA in support of the Bioeconomy.

Valerie also served as the Acting Director for the Wind Energy Technologies Office (2016-2018) within EERE where she enabled the development of the most recent Multi-Year Program Plan with a heavy focus on bringing Offshore Wind to the US.

The Bioenergy Technologies Office current focus areas include scaling up renewable hydrocarbon fuel technologies with an emphasis on Sustainable Aviation Fuels and on the development of technologies to support the recycle and upcycle of plastics as well as create biobased plastics that are recyclable by demand significantly reducing waste plastics that are making their way into the Oceans.

Dr. Sarisky-Reed holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Georgetown University, and is a graduate of the Department of Commerce’s Senior Executive Service Career Development Program.

Agustina is a Uruguayan-Italian woman living in the south of France. She studied agronomic engineering in Uruguay however she has been embedded in the agricultural world since very young. Agustina used to spend her summer holidays working for the family business growing corn and sorghum for export to Europe and the USA. This experience facilitated her connection to crop breeders from all across the world.

In September 2020, Agustina began working with Nuseed France as a production agronomist. Her current scope of responsibilities include: sunflower production, developing carinata as a cover crop, and introducing sorghum hybrids. Agustina is excited by the novelty and challenge that carinata presents in the EU.

Dr. Marina Castro works at the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INIA) of Uruguay since 1991. She has a PhD in Crop Science and her research focuses on ecophysiological aspects of winter crops (wheat, barley, canola) and temperate forage grasses, particularly those related to tolerance to abiotic stresses. She is currently the Coordinator for INIA of the Official Genotypes Evaluation Trials in Uruguay, a collaborative agreement with the National Seed Institute (INASE) for the mandatory evaluation of crops and forages genotypes to be commercialized in the country. Since 2014, she has been working with Brassica carinata in a scientific cooperation agreement with UPM BIOFORE and AGRISOMA (up to 2019), and currently with NUSEED, to introduce this new species to the crop rotation in the country in order to increase its sustainability. As a result of this cooperation and another agreement between the Faculty of Agronomy of Universidad de la República and UPM BIOFORE, in 2020 B. carinata reached an area of 10.000 ha in Uruguay, with a genotype evaluated and selected for the local environment.

Dr. Castro got her degree as an Agronomy Engineer from Universidad de la República, Uruguay, and got both her MSc and PhD at Oregon State University, USA.

Orlando is the Product Development Manager of Latin America, South, for Nuseed SA. He has been working in the seed industry for 35 years. He graduated with a degree in Agronomy from the University of Mar del Plata in Balcarce, Argentina. Orlando lives in Balcarce.

Rick joined Nuseed in 2019 as part of the Nuseed acquisition of the Carinata program. He has led the Carinata breeding team since 2012, where he was hired to help establish an R&D program based out of Saskatoon, SK, Canada. As interest in the crop and potential for commercial production expanded to multiple territories worldwide, he has helped establish strong partnerships and testing programs to develop improved varieties and determine best management practices for the crop in a number of geographies worldwide. Current responsibilities include travel to and coordination with key partners in priority geographies, overseeing product development activities, and helping roll out new variety releases and best management practices in each growing region. Rick holds a Ph.D. in Plant Breeding from the University of Alberta canola breeding program, where he gained a strong background in Brassica species and current breeding methodologies.

John Field is an R&D Staff Member in the Bioresource Science & Engineering Group, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He was previously a research scientist at the Colorado State University Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. He studies the performance of bioenergy systems at the intersection of ecosystem modeling, life cycle assessment, and sustainable land use planning, and is part of the System Metrics team within SPARC. His expertise is in using process-based ecosystem models (including the DayCent model) to evaluate the effect of biomass feedstock production on ecosystem carbon storage and greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to carinata, he has also done research on various other bioenergy feedstocks including switchgrass, corn stover, and wood from trees killed by mountain pine beetle outbreaks in the Rocky Mountains. Much of his work has focused on bioenergy landscape design, including how feedstock production could be targeted on marginal lands to maximize environmental benefits. He also has interest in carbon-negative bioenergy systems, including carbon capture and storage technology, and pyrolysis and gasification systems that co-produce biochar.