Michael Ladisch

Michael Ladisch

Distinguished Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering | Director, Laboratory of Renewable Resources Engineering
Purdue University
Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering
225 South University Street
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2093
Office: ABE 2044
Phone: +1 765 49-47022

Areas of Interest

  • Biological Engineering
  • Food, Pharmaceutical, and Biological Process Engineering
  • Data Science and Digital Agriculture

Research Areas

Bioseparations & Mass Transfer: liquid chromatography, membrane separations, microfluidics, injectable biologics. Pathogen Detection. Biocatalysis: enzymes, cellulose pretreatment, fermentation, process engineering. https://www.purdue.edu/lorre/

Biography

Michael R. Ladisch is Director of the Laboratory of Renewable Resources Engineering (LORRE), and Distinguished Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering with a joint appointment in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. His BS (1973) from Drexel University and MS (1974) and PhD (1977) from Purdue University are in Chemical Engineering. He was Chief Technology Officer of Mascoma, a biofuels company, from 2007 to 2013 and also served on the scientific advisory board of Agrivida. He is a member of the Board for the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research.

Dr. Ladisch’s research includes bioprocess and bioseparations engineering, transformation of renewable resources into biofuels and bioproducts, and detection of microbial pathogens. His fundamental studies
address proteins and living organisms at surfaces, bionanotechnology, and bioseparations. His team developed and prototyped microfiltration technology for rapid concentration and recovery of microorganisms from foods and water - an innovation that won the US FDA Food Safety Challenge in 2015. His research has resulted in technology that has reduced the cost of producing biofuels through energy-efficient removal of water from fuel ethanol at an industrial scale, and in science that enhances
conversion of cellulosic biomass into industrial sugars for production of biofuels and bioproducts.

Ladisch is an author for two textbooks, numerous journal papers, book chapters and abstracts, and holds over 20 patents. He is active in translating discoveries from the laboratory to commercialization through start-ups and licensing. Together with Professor Nathalie Duval-Couetil, he has developed a new graduate course at Purdue University that teaches the entrepreneurial process to students from a range of different disciplines. He is on editorial boards of 12 journals in the biological, biotechnology, bioresource, and chemical engineering fields.

Dr. Ladisch was elected Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering in 1994 and to the National Academy of Engineering in 1999. He has served on various committees of the US National Academy of Engineering including Chair of Bioengineering (Section 2) and Chair of the NAE Committee on Membership as well as study committees of the National Research Council. He is currently a member the National Academies’ Report Review Committee. He was named as one of the 100 engineers of the Modern Era by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in 2008. He received the Marvin J. Johnson Award of the American Chemical Society in 2002, the Charles D. Scott Award in 2009, became Fellow of ACS and AAAS in 2011, and was selected for the National Academy of Inventors in 2014. In 2015, he received the Morrill Award from Purdue University.