Dr. Chris Somerville is a professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and Director of the Energy Biosciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. He currently holds the Philomathia Foundation Chair of Alternative Energy, an organization dedicated to improving the human condition by supporting  innovative ideas across disciplines and cultures.

He received his both B.S. in Mathematics and PhD in Genetics from the University of Alberta. He conducts research focusing on the characterization of proteins implicated in plant cell-wall synthesis and modification. He has published more than 200 scientific papers in plant and microbial genetics, genomics, biochemistry and biotechnology. 

Dr. Somerville has been awarded several honors that include the Presidential Green Chemistry Award and the American Chemical Society Sterling B. Hendricks Memorial Lectureship Award. He is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London, and the Royal Society of Canada, and served as the former Director of the Lawrence National Laboratory.