Lab Partnering Service Discovery

Mr. Balsmeier has over 15 years of experience in the nuclear industry including reactor core manufacturing, design engineering, project engineering/management, and nuclear construction. He is currently the Nuclear Remote Systems Department Manager at the Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC). Mr. Balsmeier began his career in 2003 as an Officer in the United States Navy. Mr. Balsmeier was assigned as an engineer at Naval Reactor Headquarters, NAVSEA 08, supporting reactor core manufacturing and development. After his Naval service, Mr. Balsmeier started as a project and design engineer for the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in 2008. He focused on plant modifications to support experiments while at ATR. Mr. Balsmeier joined Westinghouse Electric Company in 2011 as a project support engineer for construction of the lead AP1000 plant, Sanmen 1 in Zhejiang, China. While at Sanmen, he focused on reactor plant piping installation and construction of the containment vessel and shield building. In 2014, Mr Balsmeier returned to INL working as an engineer at MFC. While at MFC, he participated in numerous modifications of the Hot Fuels Examination Facility, facility modifications and buildout of research capabilities in the Irradiated Materials Characterization Laboratory, and most recently as an engineering manager. Mr. Balsmeier holds a BS degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Kansas and a MS in Engineering Science from the Naval Postgraduate School. Mr. Balsmeier is a licensed Professional Engineer. 

A senior research fellow in the Biosciences Center, Dr. Michael Himmel has more than 35 years of experience in conducting, supervising, and planning research in: protein biochemistry, recombinant technology, enzyme engineering, new micro-organism discovery, and physicochemistry of macromolecules.

Dr. Himmel has supervised research that targets the application of site-directed mutagenesis and rational protein design to the stabilization and improvement of important industrial enzymes, especially glycosyl hydrolases. He has functioned as PI for the DOE EERE Office of the Biomass Program (OBP) since 1992, and his responsibilities have included: research to improve cellulase performance; reducing biomass pretreatment costs; and improving yields of fermentable sugars. Dr. Himmel also developed new facilities at NREL for biomass conversion research, including a Cellulase Biochemistry Laboratory, a Biomass Surface Characterization Laboratory, a Protein Crystallography Laboratory, and a new Computational Science Team.

During the past three decades, Dr. Himmel contributed 345 peer reviewed journal articles to the literature. In addition, he has edited eight books and been awarded 25 patents. He has organized or co-organized 15 international conferences on aspects of biotechnology and biomass conversion. In 2008, Dr. Himmel edited a new book for Blackwell Publishers entitled "Biomass Recalcitrance," which is listed as a top selling book in science and has now been translated into Chinese. He served as chair for the new Gordon Research Conference on cellulases and cellulosomes in 2003 and continues to support the conference. Dr. Himmel currently works closely with the biomass conversion industry, as demonstrated by the numerous CRADAs currently underway in his NREL laboratory.

Mike's research interests are in mathematical modeling of environmental systems and quality, uncertainty analysis, value-of-information decision analysis, water-energy integrated assessment, and sensor-data fusion. Mike has a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering and an MS degree in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. He also has MS and BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA. Mike is a California-licensed Professional Engineer (Civil), and has worked at an environmental engineering firm where he conducted environmental health risk assessments. He is Leader of the Sustainable Energy Systems Group and former Leader of the Airflow and Pollutant Transport Group (Indoor Environment Dept.). Mike has been at LBNL since 1998.  

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