LEADERSHIP

Members of our Executive Management Team include:

Paul Woods - Founder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Paul Woods is the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Algenol Biofuels. 

Algenol’s DIRECT TO ETHANOL® technology targets producing ethanol with operating costs of less than $1 per gallon, and with production above 8,000 gallons per acre per year (compared to corn at 400 gallons per acre per year and sugar cane at 800 gallons per acre per year).  Algenol’s process does not use farmland, nor fresh water, and the process has the added benefits of consuming CO2 and providing 2 gallons of fresh water for every gallon of ethanol. 

Paul invented the DIRECT TO ETHANOL® technology in 1984 while attending the University of Western Ontario near Toronto, Canada. Patents for the original technology were granted in 2001 (US), 2004 (US), 2005 (Australia) and 2007 (Europe).  Woods and Algenol currently hold 9 patents and have 28 patents pending. 

Algenol currently employs 115 employees in Lee County Florida and 40 employees in Germany.  Algenol’s Florida Integrated Biorefinery, will include 3,100 photobioreactors on 17 acres that consume 2 tonnes of CO2 per day and have the capacity to produce more than 100,000 gallons of fuel grade ethanol per year when finished in 2013.

 

Edward Legere, MBA – Founder, Executive Vice President

Edward J. Legere is a co-founder and an Executive Vice President of Algenol.

Prior to Algenol, Mr. Legere gained more than 18 years of experience in the biotechnology industry as a consultant and active business manager. His experience includes serving as the Chief Executive Officer of Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a publicly traded biotechnology company. While with Peregrine, Mr. Legere founded Avid Bioservices, a wholly owned subsidiary of Peregrine Pharmaceuticals Inc. Avid Biosciences developed and implemented world-wide sales of a cGMP protein manufacturing services. Ed has more than ten years of experience working with publicly traded companies, including serving on a variety of boards.

Ed received a Bachelor of Science in International Business from Florida Atlantic University and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

 

Paul Roessler, Ph.D. - Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Paul Roessler has over 30 years of research experience involving the physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology of plants and algae. Prior to joining Algenol, Paul was Vice President of Renewable Fuels and Chemicals at Synthetic Genomics, Inc., where he led a program to develop renewable fuels and chemicals from cyanobacteria and other types of algae. Prior to that, he worked at the Dow Chemical Company as a Senior R&D Leader in Core Biotechnology, where he oversaw internal and external plant biotechnology programs involving the modification of seed oils for industrial and nutritional products. Paul also worked at Monsanto as a Principal Sceintist to develop microbial strains for the fermentative production of nutritional oils and in the Aquatic Species Program of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop technology for the production of algal biofuels, where he led the team that produced the first genetically engineered marine microalgae.

He received an M.S. degree in Plant Physiology from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

 

Quang Ha, J.D. - General Counsel

Quang Ha is the General Counsel of Algenol.

From 2006 to 2010, Mr. Ha served as General Counsel or Chief Legal Officer for a variety of financial services and asset management businesses of FSI Capital, LLC. He helped to expand and reorganize these businesses, as well as navigate them through the financial crisis. Prior to FSI Capital, Mr. Ha served as Director and Counsel at Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC from 2002 to 2004, managing and providing legal coverage for certain complex and innovative financial products. Mr. Ha also has previous experience practicing international law at the firm of Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy LLP, focusing on corporate, finance and capital markets transactions.

Mr. Ha received an A.B. degree, cum laude, in Economics from Harvard University and a J.D. degree from The University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he was an Executive Editor of The University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

 

Kathleen McFadden, CPA - Chief Financial Officer

Kathleen McFadden is the Chief Financial Officer of Algenol.

She began her career as a public auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC, formerly Coopers & Lybrand). While at PWC her client base included multi-location, publicly traded manufacturing companies. Recruited by Unilever, one of her PWC clients, she spent 14 years in various positions of progressive financial responsibility, including financial planning and analysis and reporting. While at the Calvin Klein Cosmetics division, she was involved in the financial planning and reporting for the construction of a 455,000 square-foot manufacturing plant. She also has broad experience in implementing integrated ERP systems. Ms. McFadden’s broad experience in budgeting, reporting, auditing and systems implementation for large companies gives her a solid platform for her responsibilities at Algenol. Kathleen received her B.S. in Accounting from Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut, majoring in Accounting with a minor in economics.

 

Benjamin A. McCool, Ph.D - Vice President, Engineering

Ben McCool is the Vice President of Engineering for Algenol.

Dr. Ben McCool began his career at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering in Annandale, NJ. At ExxonMobil he was involved in a number of separations related research and development projects, including significant work in developing materials and processes for carbon dioxide capture. Under Dr. McCool’s leadership, the Algenol Engineering team generates the scientific and engineering knowledge necessary for photobioreactor design, techno-economic modeling, product separation, process engineering, life cycle analysis and carbon capture and utilization for the deployment of our Integrated Biorefinery and the commercialization of the DIRECT TO ETHANOL® process.

Ben received his BS and MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati and his PhD from the University of Maine.

 

Dirk Radzinski, J.D., LL.M. - Chief Executive Officer of Algenol Biofuels Switzerland GmbH.

Dirk Radzinski is the Chief Executive Officer of Algenol Biofuels Switzerland GmbH.

Mr. Radzinski founded several companies during his career and successfully grew them up to 100 employees. He worked for a M&A London based law firm (Travers Smith) on international acquisitions and served as CEO of the technology transfer office of Humboldt-University, Berlin. He co-founded Cyano Biofuels GmbH in 2007. After Algenol took over the company he became CEO of Algenol Biofuels Switzerland.

Mr. Radzinski received an A.B. degree in economics and a J.D degree from Free University Berlin, Germany and a LL.M. degree from University of Cape Town, South Africa.

 

Craig Smith, M.D. - Founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Dr. Craig Smith is an Executive Vice President and the Chief Operating Officer of Algenol.

Craig’s background includes co-founding and serving as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Guilford Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a publicly held biopharmaceutical company, from 1993 to 2004. Dr. Smith served in various senior roles from 1988 to 1992 at Centocor, Inc., a publicly held biotechnology company, which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.From 1975 to 1988, Dr. Smith served on the faculty of the Department of Medicine at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. Smith has served on many corporate and charitable boards including the Johns Hopkins Alliance for Science, the Board of Directors of Adams Express Company (NYSE: ADX), a publicly held closed-end equity investment company, Petroleum & Resources Corporation (NYSE: PEO), a publicly held equity investment company specializing in energy and natural resources, and Depomed, Inc. (NASDAQ: DEPO), a publicly held specialty pharmaceutical company. Dr. Smith has received numerous awards and honors, including the 1997 Maryland Entrepreneur of the Year Award and election to the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 2000. He received his B.A. from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, and his M.D. from State University of New York at Buffalo.

 

Ronald Chance, Ph.D. - Senior Scientific Advisor, Physical Sciences

Dr. Ronald Chance is the Senior Scientific Advisor, Physical Sciences.

Dr. Chance began his career with Honeywell Corporation, where he served in a number of research positions including Research Manager for Electronic Materials. In 1986, he joined Exxon as the Director of the company's Polymers and Fluids Laboratory, later serving as Division Manager for the Paramins Technology division, and as Distinguished Scientific Advisor in ExxonMobil’s Corporate Strategic Research Laboratories. Dr. Chance retired from ExxonMobil in 2006.Ron joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as a faculty member with a joint appointment in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. He also served as Distinguished Scientific Advisor Emeritus at ExxonMobil from 2006-2009.

Dr. Chance has organized several international scientific meetings and served on numerous university advisory boards, including currently for chemical engineering at the University of Southern California and materials science at the University of Stockholm. Ron received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

 

John Coleman, Ph.D. - Senior Scientific Advisor, Biological Sciences

Professor John R. Coleman serves as the Senior Scientific Advisor of Algenol.

Professor Coleman was the Vice-Principal of Research and Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and a Professor in the Department of Cell and Systems Biology on the St. George campus of the University of Toronto prior to joining Algenol. He served as Chair of the Department of Botany from 1998 to 2004 and played a primary role in the formation of the new Department of Cell and Systems Biology in 2006. During his academic career, John's research interests were in the fields of molecular biology and biochemistry of photosynthetic carbon metabolism in higher plants and cyanobacteria. Dr. Coleman received his Ph.D. in plant biochemistry from York University in Toronto, Canada.

 

Additional members of our leadership team include:

  • Dan Kramer, Managing Director - Algenol Biofuels Germany GmbH
  • Heike Enke, Chief Scientific Officer - Algenol Biofuels Germany GmbH
  • Ming-de Deng, Director of Molecular Biology
  • Frank Jochem, Senior Director of the Algenol Aquaculture and Field Research Facility
  • Mitchell Rosner, Senior Director of Analytical Chemistry and Bioinformatics
  • Dax Denman, Director of Program Management
  • Patrick Ahlm, Assistant Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs/ Business Development Team
  • Sabra Smith, Director/ Business Development Team