John McGowen

Dr. John McGowen is currently serving as Director for the Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation (AzCATI) at Arizona State University and responsible for the overall integration of the academic and industrial collaboration, project communications, personnel management, budget management, and day to day project lifecycle for AzCATI. Research focus is on the identification and implementation of best practices in algae growth and processing, standardization of methodologies and conducting long term cultivation trials that were established through the Algae Testbed Public Private Partnership (ATP³) with funding from the Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technology Office (BETO) and continued under the consortium “Development of Integrated Screening, Cultivar Optimization, and Verification Research” (DISCOVR). Dr. McGowen is principal or co-investigator on multiple federal and industry sponsored research and development projects with a continued focus on improving algal biomass productivity and quality in outdoor cultivation, new sensor and production system development, and implementation of crop protection best practices, and support for new biotechnology applications for algae. Dr. McGowen has a PhD in polymer science and worked for Motorola, Amersham Biosciences and GE Healthcare prior to joining ASU in 2005. He has been Director for AzCATI since its founding in 2010 and been working in algae biotechnology since 2008.