Nancy Dowe is the section manager of NREL's National Bioenergy Center Bioprocess Development Group. The group is largely made up of fermentation scientists and engineers whose focus is on fermentation process development and pilot plant scale-up. Nancy has nearly 30 years of experience working with a wide variety of fermentation processes and microorganisms for the production of specialty chemicals and fuels. She specializes in using biomass sugars in the processes.

Research Interests

Integrating process steps

Developing technology that will scale, is efficient, and is economical

Industrial collaborations

Current Projects

Biological upgrading of sugars to fuels and chemicals

Bench-scale integration and scale-up of biological processes to produce fuels and chemicals from lignocellulosic biomass

Biological upgrading of methane to fuels and chemicals

Validation activities for the Department of Energy's Bioenergy Technologies Office

Featured Work

Improving a Recombinant Zymomonas mobilis Strain 8b through Continuous Adaptation on Dilute Acid Pretreated Corn Stover Hydrolysate, Biotechnology for Biofuels (2015)

Improving Xylose Utilization by Recombinant Zymomonas mobilis Strain 8b Through Adaptation Using 2-Deoxyglucose, Biotechnology for Biofuels (2014)

An Economic Comparison of Different Fermentation Configurations to Convert Corn Stover to Ethanol Using Z. mobilis and Saccharomyces, Biotechnology Progress (2010)

Chapter 15: Assessing Cellulase Performance on Pretreated Lignocellulosic Biomass Using Saccharification and Fermentation-Based Protocols, in Methods in Molecular Biology (2009)

SSF Experimental Protocols Lignocellulosic Biomass Hydrolysis and Fermentation, NREL Technical Report (2008)

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Please contact me with research questions, ideas for collaborations, and questions about the fermentation process development and integration. Please do NOT contact me directly for jobs—see instead information on NREL's Director's Postdoctoral Fellowship program or on NREL Careers in general.