Robert Conrado

Rob Conrado is an ARPA-E Fellow and is focused on new approaches to produce both liquid fuels and commodity chemicals to reduce the U.S. dependence on imported oil. He is investigating the conversion of natural gas to transportation fuels as well as scale-up of biochemical conversion technologies.

Prior to joining ARPA-E, Conrado completed his Ph.D. in Biomolecular and Chemical Engineering at Cornell University, where he worked in Matthew DeLisa's protein engineering group. Using tools from synthetic biology, he created novel enzyme systems that improved biofuel production in microorganisms by targeting several approaches to improve the enzyme kinetics of metabolic pathways.

During his Ph.D. at Cornell, Conrado was part of a core team at Innovation Interface that consulted for a Fortune 10 Company for a period of two years. There he analyzed woody biomass supply costs in the U.S. and mapped competing industries to assess the business opportunity.

Conrado received a B.E. in Biochemical Engineering from Dartmouth College where he worked in the bioengineering lab of Tillman Gerngross.