Seminar: Jennifer Holmgren, LanzaTech

The Department welcomes Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech.

Becoming CarbonSmart: Being Mad without going Crazy!

Jennifer Holmgren will talk about her journey in scaling up innovations that everyone thought were impossible. She will discuss the challenges of getting across the valley of death and what it means to build a successful team. She will touch upon her experiences at LanzaTech and how the development of the world’s first carbon recycling facilty in China has led to a whole new way of looking at how we procure, utilize and dispose of carbon.

Dr. Jennifer Holmgren is CEO of revolutionary carbon recycling company, LanzaTech. Prior to LanzaTech, Jennifer was VP and General Manager of the Renewable Energy and Chemicals business unit at UOP LLC, a Honeywell Company. Under her management, UOP technology became instrumental in producing nearly all of the initial fuels used by commercial airlines and the military for testing and certification of alternative aviation fuel. Today, under Jennifer’s guidance, LanzaTech is working towards deploying carbon capture and reuse facilities globally to make fuels and chemicals from waste carbon. Dr. Holmgren is also on the board of Sustainable Bioproducts (SBP), a food company seeking to revolutionize the alternative protein market with breakthrough biotechnology.  In 2015, Jennifer and her team at LanzaTech were awarded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Presidential Green Chemistry Award and she received the BIO Rosalind Franklin Award for Leadership in Industrial Biotechnology and the Outstanding Leader Award in Corporate Social Innovation from the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago.  She was named most influential leader in the Bioeconomy by Biofuels Digest in 2017 and received a Global Bioenergy Leadership Award in 2018. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, a dog lover and committed greyhound rescuer, Jennifer holds a B.Sc. degree from Harvey Mudd College, a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the University of Chicago.