The Center for Bioenergy Innovation, or CBI, at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has promoted Melissa Cregger and Carrie Eckert to serve as chief science officers, advancing the center's mission of innovations for new domestic biofuels, chemicals and materials.
Cregger will oversee CBI's development of resilient, high-yielding, non-food feedstock crops, while Eckert will guide the center's research on cost-effective methods to break down and convert plant biomass into valuable fuels and products.
Brian Davison, chief scientist for biotechnology at ORNL and formerly chief science officer for the center, has moved into a new role with CBI as industrial liaison, stewarding outreach as part of its Research Council. He also continues to lead a separate project, the DOE Solvent Disruption of Biomass and Biomembrane Structures in the Production of Biofuels and Bioproducts Science Focus Area at ORNL.
CBI is one of four DOE Bioenergy Resource Centers, or BRCs across the nation laying the science and technology foundation for a robust bioeconomy, boosting domestic supply chains and energy security while providing job growth in America's rural areas. CBI has 17 research partners, encompassing national labs, universities and private industry. Together, the BRCs recently registered more than 1,000 inventions in their shared mission supporting the U.S. bioeconomy.
Carrie and Melissa bring deep expertise in relevant science areas such as genomics, plant and microbial science and synthetic biology, along with exceptional management skills, to their new roles at CBI supporting the nation's leadership in biotechnology.
"I also want to recognize Brian's exceptional legacy as chief science officer at CBI and its BioEnergy Science Center predecessor at ORNL, where he managed the development of key breakthroughs for novel biofuels and bioproducts manufacturing," Tuskan said. "I look forward to Brian's continued leadership supporting CBI's outreach to industry in the growing biomanufacturing sector."
Cregger, senior scientist at ORNL, began her staff appointment at the lab in 2015 as a Liane Russell Distinguished Fellow, and was awarded a DOE Early Career Award in 2021 for her research in plant-microbe interactions that support plant health, growth and resilience, with a focus on the poplar tree, a key bioenergy crop. She received the Presidential Early Career Award in 2025, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on early-career scientists and engineers. She has worked as a task lead for CBI for several years, in addition to supporting two DOE Science Focus Areas at ORNL - the Plant-Microbe Interfaces and the Secure Ecosystem Engineering and Design, or SEED, SFAs.
"I am honored to serve as a co-lead for CBI's science mission," Cregger said. "I look forward to continuing my work focused on feedstock development as well as stewarding research in this domain across the interdisciplinary CBI network."
Eckert, senior scientist and lead of the Synthetic Biology Group at ORNL, is an expert in the development of microbes for efficient, low-cost production of biofuels, chemical feedstocks and biomaterials. She was most recently team lead for Rapid Genetics at CBI, and also serves as co-principal investigator for the SEED SFA. She has engineered candidate microbes for the DOE Agile BioFoundry, a national lab consortium dedicated to accelerating biomanufacturing. Eckert is an expert in the use and refinement of genetic tools such as CRISPR-Cas9 and ORNL's SAGE system to customize model and non-model microbes, creating new pathways for the biological-based production of domestic fuels and products, including plastics upcycling. She was recently elected to the board of directors for the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology.
"I am excited to be co-leading biotechnology innovations across CBI's network of scientists," Eckert said. "CBI represents the best of cross-disciplinary and organizational collaboration, uniting expertise across the public and private sectors for shared success in advancing the bioeconomy."
Davison's role as industrial liaison at CBI is a full-circle moment in his 40-year career at ORNL, as he was instrumental in assembling the partnership structure of CBI and BESC, and in designing and carrying out its mentoring and STEM outreach programs. Davison is an ORNL Corporate Fellow and a Battelle Distinguished Inventor, known for his work in biological conversion of plant biomass, fermentation and characterization research, catalytic upgrading of ethanol into fuels, and economic analyses of the same. He has served on the board and is a Fellow of several biological and chemical engineering societies, and has organized or participated in more than 15 DOE workshops and road-mapping efforts to advance the nation's global leadership in biotechnology.
"I'm looking forward to expanding CBI's relationships in commercializing our science and technology innovations and in identifying key barriers for real-world impact in support of a strong biobased economy," Davison said.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE's Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science . - Stephanie Seay
