This year's showcase will be a virtual event held over Zoom.
- 2:00-3:00pm: Advisory Council Committee Meetings
Zoom meeting link to join.- Committees to Convene:
- Student Recruitment & Retention
- Academic Advisory
- External Relations
- Committees to Convene:
- 3:00-4:30pm: Advisory Council General Meeting
Zoom meeting link to join.
- 5:30-7:30pm: Scholarship Recognition Event
Zoom meeting link to join.
Keynote Speakers:
Our keynote speakers, Paul Bloom, Chief Carbon Officer and Chief Innovation Officer, and Karen O’Brien, Sustainability Engineering Manager, both from Gevo, will offer their presentations at the scholarship recognition event.
DR. PAUL BLOOM
Chief Carbon Officer; Chief Innovation Officer, Gevo Inc.
Paul D. Bloom has served as Chief Carbon Officer and Chief Innovation Officer of Gevo since March 2021. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Illinois State University and has a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Iowa State University. Throughout his career, Dr. Bloom has successfully managed technology and business development initiatives from the idea stage to commercialization. He is a leading expert in the scale-up of plant-based products for food, feed, fuel, and sustainable materials markets and has authored more than 30 associated patents. In 2005, Dr. Bloom was awarded the U.S. EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Award for Designing Safer Chemicals. In 2016, he, along with other team members, received the Platts Global Energy Breakthrough Solution of the Year, followed by the Innovation in Bioplastics Award from the Plastics Industry Association in 2017. In 2019, Dr. Bloom was inducted into the Illinois State University Hall of Fame. He is devoted to serving his community and is a passionate advocate of STEM education.
Karen O’Brien
Sustainability Engineering Manager, Gevo Inc.
Karen has served as a process engineer with Gevo since 2016 and as the sustainability engineering manager since 2019. She has validated, built, and verified Life Cycle Models for global carbon markets and led the certification of production facilities and feedstock for both ISCC and RSB. She enabled the creation of a blockchain solution for Gevo's sustainability supply chain that led to the formation of Verity Tracking, a joint venture with Blocksize Capital, the first of its kind to trace sustainability claims from the field to flight. Ms. O'Brien currently represents Gevo under the Advanced Biofuels Association in the Fuels Task Group working group under ICAO CORSIA. She holds a bachelor's degree in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering with a Minor in Biomedical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines and is currently completing an MBA from the University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business.