Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals: The Twenty-Fourth Symposium

The increased attendance required concurrent sessions for the 48 oral presentations and 190 submitted posters. Attendees came from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and Ven­ ezuela, as well as from the United States. This international perspective was continued in a Special Topic Ses­ sion sponsored by the International Energy Agency (lEA) Bioenergy Pro­ gram on Biofuels and chaired by Jack Saddler and David Gregg from the University of British Columbia. Several of the 10 member countries in this network are approaching Demonstrations of the Biomass-to-Ethanol pro­ cess and have a range of more fundamental projects that look at various aspects of pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation, and lignin utilization. Presenters from several of the participating countries described their country's biomass-to-ethanol projects, and differential factors such as the type of biomass available, the maturity of the wood or agricultural processing industry, and the willingness of government to bear the risk/ cost of development and demonstration.