Dr. Michael Timko is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), a university focused on technology and business in central Massachusetts (USA). Dr. Timko's main research interests involve the study of new technologies for production of sustainable fuels, chemicals, and materials. He works closely with industry on many of these projects. For example, his group is developing new catalytic methods to convert heavy oils into fuels and chemicals using supercritical water as a co-solvent. Supercritical water has shown promise as an upgrading technology that can reduce hydrogen consumption without increasing coke rejection. Prof. Timko's group is now working to understand how to deploy catalysts in the supercritical water environment, focusing on establishing the role of the catalyst and the role of water on catalytic activity and stability. In addition to his group's work on heavy oil upgrading, Dr. Timko is working on several projects related to biofuels and bio-based chemicals, including 1) study of solid acid catalysts and novel technologies for biomass deconstruction, 2) development of in situ methods for monitoring biomass degradation, 3) design of a novel fermentation process that couples biochemical production of butanol with continuous stripping using supercritical carbon dioxide, 4) conversion of biorenewable wastes into valuable solid materials, and 5) catalytic upgrading of dilute aqueous streams to fuel molecules and chemicals. He is author of more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and the recipient of the National Science Foundation's CAREER award and the American Chemical Society's Glenn Research Award. Prof. Timko is on the editorial board of the Journal of Supercritical Fluids and a Director of AIChE's Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division. Prior to joining WPI, Dr. Timko was a Principal Engineer at Aerodyne Research Inc., where he worked on projects related to fuel chemistry and combustion, and a Research Engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His training is in chemical engineering and chemical physics at The Ohio State University (B.S.), MIT (M.S. and Ph.D.), and Harvard University (post-doc).