Maureen McCann — Acting Associate Laboratory Director, Bioeconomy and Sustainable Transportation

Maureen McCann is the acting associate laboratory director for bioeconomy and sustainable transportation capabilities at NREL.

Her key research areas include innovation in performance-advantaged fuels, chemicals, and materials for transportation and the efficient movement of people and freight. McCann oversees NREL's bioenergy, vehicle, and biological and environmental research programs. She is also NREL's point of contact for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science's Biological and Environmental Research program funding opportunities, responsible for sponsor interface and program management and execution.

McCann joined NREL in December 2020 as director of the Biosciences Center and is an NREL senior research fellow. Prior to NREL, McCann was a professor of biological sciences and director of Purdue University's U.S. Navy Enterprise Partnership Teaming with Universities for National Excellence Center for Power and Energy, funded by the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Naval Research. She was also director of the Center for Direct Catalytic Conversion of Biomass to Biofuels, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by DOE's Office of Science.

McCann's 125 peer-reviewed publications—in research areas comprising cell-wall structures and functions in plant growth and development and the optimization of cell walls in lignocellulosic biomass for various end uses, using synthetic biology and genetic engineering approaches—have collectively been cited more than 22,000 times. She serves on various advisory boards and committees for energy-related research and is an alumna of DOE's Oppenheimer Science and Energy Leadership Program. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a fellow, pioneer, and past president of the American Society for Plant Biologists.

McCann obtained her undergraduate degree in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge and a doctorate in botany from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the John Innes Centre—a U.K.-funded research institute for plant and microbial sciences—and remained there as a project leader through a Royal Society University Research Fellowship before coming to the United States in 2003.