Jay Keasling Jay Keasling received his B.S. in Chemistry and Biology from the University of Nebraska in 1986; his Ph. D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1991; and did post-doctoral work in Biochemistry at Stanford University from 1991-1992. Keasling joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley as an assistant professor in 1992, where he is currently professor. Keasling is also a professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Berkeley, a faculty scientist and Director of the Physical Biosciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Director of the Berkeley Center for Synthetic Biology. Dr. Keasling’s research focuses on engineering microorganisms for environmentally friendly synthesis of small molecules or degradation of environmental contaminants. Keasling’s laboratory has engineered bacteria and yeast to produce polymers and a precursor to the anti-malarial drug artemisinin and soil microorganisms to accumulate uranium and to degrade nerve agents.