Everything Biomass

Albert Cheh, PhD

Visiting Professor

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Phone: (202) 885-1772
Fax: (202) 885-1752
Office: 304 Beeghly Building, American University, Washington DC 20016

Albert M. Cheh is Professor of Environmental Science and of Chemistry at American University in Washington DC. I received a BA in Chemistry from Columbia and a PhD in Biochemistry from UC Berkeley. After spending the last 20 years with my own research group and one at NIH studying polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) diol epoxide (DE) reactions with DNA and the role of error prone bypass DNA polymerases in converting PAH DE addition products into mutations that lead to cancer, I moved my primary affiliation at American University from Chemistry to Environmental Science, and had the opportunity, for which I am very grateful, to spend the first half of 2009 on sabbatical in Bruce Dale’s lab and learn the ins and outs of cellulosic ethanol. We continue to work jointly on the projects below.

My motivation was the promise that cellulosic ethanol holds for contributing to solutions for two global problems – climate change from fossil fuel emissions and energy security issues many nations face (not just the US) due to the uneven distribution of petroleum reserves, often in unstable or hostile areas.

Research Interests:

• Biomass digestion and understanding the biochemical and pretreatment factors that increase the rate of digestion
• Inhibition of digestion by side products from biomass pretreatment and methods of removing inhibitors
• Inhibition of digestion by sorption to lignin