People

Karl is the CEO/President and Founder of Mercurius Biorefining Inc. a company formed to develop and commercialize transformational technology. The technology efficiently converts biomass into drop-in biofuels and green chemicals. Karl has spent most of his career in the petroleum refining field as a process engineer. He has held design, technical services, optimization, and operations management positions with three oil companies: Conoco, Sunoco, and Clark. After working for a mid-sized engineering firm, Karl started his own process consulting service in 2001 to provide optimization services to the petroleum industry. He received a BS Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Kansas.

Michael has started-up and run successful companies in Japan and Australia. He has a degree in International Finance from Oregon State and a Masters in International Marketing from University of Technology, Sydney.

Eric is a licensed Professional Engineer with 16 years of experience across petroleum refining, lube oil recycling, biorefining, district energy, and commercial building systems. His background spans engineering, project management, commissioning, and operations and maintenance, including hands-on experience at the Mercurius pilot plant. Eric brings a practical, operations-focused perspective informed by working across the full project lifecycle. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Washington and M.S. in Analytics from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Knud has 25+ years of international business development experience. He has a BSC from the Danish Technical University.

Dr. Mark Mascal

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​​​​​​​Mark is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of California Davis. He received his PhD from the University of London, Imperial College and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Strasbourg, France. He was a Lecturer, Loughborough University and the University of Nottingham, UK and a Visiting Professor at UCLA.

Dr. Clayton Wheeler

Clay is an Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Maine. He received his BS, MS and PhD degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. He gained industrial process experience with Texaco, Inc. and as a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.