cellulosic-ethanol
(4)
Terragia Biofuel
Terragia Biofuel is a New Hampshire climate-tech startup turning non-food plant waste into cost-competitive, low-carbon ethanol using engineered thermophilic bacteria. Its consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) approach skips the expensive enzymes and thermochemical pretreatment that have historically sunk cellulosic biofuel economics, promising an 8x shorter payback period at 10x smaller scale. Spun out of Professor Lee Lynd's decades of research at Dartmouth, Terragia aims to make biofuels for hard-to-electrify transport - aviation, shipping, and long-haul trucking - that can actually compete with fossil fuels.
Kristin Brief
Kristin Brief is the CEO of Terragia Biofuel, a Hanover, New Hampshire startup engineering thermophilic bacteria to turn farm leftovers into cost-competitive, low-carbon ethanol. A 20-year clean energy operator and former Breakthrough Energy Fellow, she previously co-founded medical diagnostics company Virex Health, which was acquired by Sorrento Therapeutics.
Lee Lynd
Lee Rybeck Lynd is a biochemical engineer and microbiologist who has spent four decades figuring out how to make plants pay for themselves as fuel. He is the Paul E. and Joan H. Queneau Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Dartmouth, co-founder and CTO of Terragia Biofuel, and the scientist most associated with consolidated bioprocessing, the one-pot fermentation idea that uses heat-loving bacteria like Clostridium thermocellum to chew through crop residue and spit out ethanol.
Colin South
Colin South is a New Zealand-born biotechnology executive and the founding leader of ArkeaBio, a Boston climate-tech company building the world's first vaccine to cut methane emissions from cattle. He grew up on a 1,000-head sheep farm, earned a PhD in bioprocess engineering from Dartmouth, and spent 25-plus years turning microbes into commercial products across the food, fuel, and energy industries. He launched ArkeaBio in 2021, ran it as CEO from January 2022, and in September 2025 stepped into the Chief Business Officer seat as the company brought in a new CEO and pushed toward field trials.