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Friday, July 31, 2009
The Mover
Gray brings a lengthy biofuels background to Qteros
By Lynette Cornell
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While many scientists have recently ridden the industry wave into studying alternative fuels, Qteros Inc.’s new CTO Kevin Gray has been immersed in the industry for decades. He entered the field after becoming interested in biofuels for their science, which he found fascinating, and because of the global impact of fossil fuels.
Most recently Gray served as senior director of biofuels research and development at Verenium Corp. (formerly Diversia Corp.) in San Diego. At Verenium, Gray worked on a project to use biological methods to replace expensive industrial catalysts. By creating a reaction on a molecular scale, scientists could make alternative fuels and products in the food and beverage sectors more cost effective, knocking down a huge obstacle between scientific possibility and economically sensible reality. The methods were new, while the resulting product remained the same.
“Ethanol is ethanol whether it’s in beer or wine or fuel,” said Gray. “All we’re doing is making beer out of sugar.”
His passion for making alternative fuels economically practical attracted him to Marlborough-based Qteros, an alternative fuel company using their namesake Q-Microbe to digest and ferment cellulose into ethanol in a one-step process.
As the company’s new CTO, his challenge is to make alternative fuel cheap to produce. Until that is accomplished, he said, the fuels used now will continue to dominate the market because they are relatively cheap to produce.
“Fuel is a commodity. It’s probably the ultimate commodity,” said Gray.
Gray began his pathway in the sciences at Duke University, majoring in zoology. He graduated in 1983, and uncertain what to do with his degree, took a year off to live in Florida and work odd jobs. He then went Texas Tech University, earning his doctorate in physical biochemistry.
Next, he set off for Munich, doing his post-doctoral work at the Max Planck Institute, working mainly in photosynthesis. For additional post-doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, he studied bioenergetics, the study of how plants supply their own energy.
The next year was a whirlwind of activity as Gray and his wife bought a house and had their first child, and Gray secured his first job. For the next four years, Gray worked at Energy BioSystems Corp., developing processes for the desulfurization of fossil fuels.
From there, he went to Diversia, which merged with another company to become Verenium, and in May of 2009, began as CTO at Qteros. In his new position, he will be responsible for communication about the company’s technology, overseeing R&D strategies and working with potential partners.
“My role here is to instill a lot of commercial reality into what we are trying to do,” Gray said.
Outside the office, Gray spends time with his family. When working at Diversia, he gave tours of the company to his children’s classmates, a practice he said has helped him in improving his presentation skills.
Lynette Cornell is a freelance writer in Manchester, N.H.
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