Richard Sayre

Biography

After receiving his B.A. in Biology, in 1974, from Humboldt State University in California, he went on to get his Ph. D in Biology at the University of Iowa, where he focused on the biochemistry of photosynthesis. From then on Dr. Sayre’s research focused on plants. He did postdoctoral work at several universities and eventually found his way to the Departments of Biochemistry and of Plant Biology at Ohio State University in 1985. During that time, he served on the boards of many different organizations dealing with plant biology, and his work earned him the title of one of the “Five Crop Researchers Who Could Change the World” in the journal Nature.

Research Interest

Dr. Richard Sayre is a senior research scientist at Los Alamos Nationals Labs (LANL) and New Mexico Consortium (NMC) focusing on biological renewable energy programs. Prior to coming to the LANL and the NMC, Dr. Sayre was the Director of the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St Louis and a faculty member and Chairman of the Department of Plant Cellular and Molecular Biology at Ohio State University. Dr. Sayre is currently the Scientific Director for the Center for Advanced Biofuel Systems, a DOE-Energy Frontier Research Center, and the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels, the DOE algal biomass program. From 2005-2010, Dr. Sayre directed the BioCassava Plus Program funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Biocassava Plus developed biofortified cassava for subsistence farmers in Africa. Dr. Sayre is a co-founder and CTO of Phycal Inc, an algal biofuels company operating in Ohio, Missouri and Hawaii.