Venkatesh Balan is an Assistant Professor of Biotechnology at the Department of Engineering Technology at University of Houston. His research experience include, protein expression system in microbes, understanding structure and function of protein, producing fuels and chemical from lignocellulosic biomass using chemical pretreatment, enzyme hydrolysis and microbial fermentation, identification of small molecules using spectroscopy techniques. He spent almost twelve and half years at Michigan State University and developed key technologies including: several novel ammonia pretreatment process to produce pretreated agricultural residues useful for producing bio-fuels, bio-chemicals and animal feed, cost effective microbial fermentation process and healthy nutritional products from fungus. 

Dr. Balan is internationally recognized for his work in the area of understanding synergy operating between enzymes during biomass hydrolysis, developed fast hydrolysis and fermentation process by efficiently recycling enzymes, microbes, Lignin separation and fractionation to produce precursors for biomaterials and finally separation and structure determination of oligosaccharides. Some of his inventions has helped to reduce the cost of producing second generation biofuels and produce healthy food materials.