Mattheos Koffas is the Dorothy and Fred Chau ’71 Endowed Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

He received his PhD from MIT in 2001 under the supervision of Professor Gregory Stephanopoulos where he worked on amino acid production from Corynebacterium glutamicum. He was a Visiting Research Scientist at DuPont Central Research from 2001 to 2002 where he worked on methanotrophic bacteria, that resulted in the development of a process for the conversion of C-1 compounds to high-value chemicals.

He works in the field of metabolic engineering and systems biotechnology with particular emphasis on the biosynthesis of natural products. He has developed processes for the conversion of plastic waste to biopolymers, as well as the conversion of carbon dioxide to polyphenoliccompounds. He is the Editor of Biotechnology Advances and Metabolic Engineering Communications. He currently serves on the editorial board of several Journals, including the Current Opinion in Biotechnology, Metabolic Engineering, Biotechnology Journal, Biochemical Engineering Journal and Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering.

He has published more than 150 peer review papers and holds a number of patents some of which have been commercialized.