Biofeedstock Company Proterro Names Bioprocessing Expert Engineering VP

EWING, NJ--September 27, 2013: Proterro, Inc., the only biofeedstock company that actually makes sucrose instead of extracting it from crops or deconstructing cellulosic materials, has named Timothy Cooper, Ph.D., vice president of engineering.

Dr. Cooper joins Proterro’s executive team with more than two decades of deep experience in bioprocessing. Prior to joining Proterro, he was responsible for Eastman Chemical Company’s biotechnology effort, managing genetic engineering and fermentation development programs, and driving generation of intellectual property.

Before Eastman Chemical, Dr. Cooper was fermentation research leader at Dow AgroSciences LLC, where he was responsible for development and scale-up of new fermentation processes and managing the fermentation development efforts of three laboratories.

At Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Dr. Cooper directed the company’s fermentation and recovery development effort that solved key manufacturing obstacles of a complicated, multicomponent vaccine, successfully scaling the process to commercial volumes.

Dr. Cooper’s experience also includes:

Staff engineer at Diosynth (now FujiFilm Diosynth Biotechnologies), responsible for development and scale-up of new client fermentation and purification processes;

Senior fermentation engineer at Novozymes (Novo Nordisk Biochem), responsible for multiple advances in fermentation technology that led to yield increases and cost reduction; and Pilot plant manager at W.R. Grace & Co., responsible for research and development of fermentation products, successfully scaling up fermentation and recovery process to provide commercial quantities of product.

A member of the American Chemical Society and the Society of Industrial Microbiology, Dr. Cooper earned a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Tennessee Technological University and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin.