Martin Keller has been the Director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) since November 30, 2015. The NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. He also serves as the President of the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, which manages and operates the laboratory on behalf of the DOE.
Dr. Keller received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Regensburg, Germany. He began working with Diversa Corporation, a publicly-traded biotechnology company in San Diego, in June 1994 as a consultant to build and develop the microbiology expertise within Diversa, before joining the company full time in 1996. Between 1996 and 2006, he held a series of research management positions within Diversa Corporation. As the Director for New Technology Development and High Throughput Screening, Dr. Keller was responsible for Small Molecule Discovery and High Throughput Screening (HTS), including microbiology, robotic HTS, high throughput ELISA, HTS whole cell assays, flow cytometry, biopanning, Multiple Displacement Amplification development and ultra HTS development using miniaturized bead technology.
In May 2006, Dr. Keller joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as Director of the BioEnergy Science Center, whose mission is to make revolutionary advances in understanding and overcoming the recalcitrance of biomass to conversion into sugars, making it feasible to displace imported petroleum with ethanol and other fuels. On November 1, 2010, the new Energy and Environmental Sciences directorate was formed, and Dr. Keller was asked act as Associate Laboratory Director overseeing four research divisions (Biosciences, Environmental Sciences, Energy and Transportation Science, and Electrical and Electronics Systems Research) and several research centers, including the DOE BioEnergy Science Center and the Climate Change Science Institute. In this capacity, he was responsible for the ORNL energy, biological, and environmental research programs supported by the DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Institutes of Health. He held this position until 2015, when he assumed his current appointment as Director of NREL.