Scott Banta is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University, where Banta’s research focuses on applying protein engineering, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology tools to solve a variety of important problems in bioengineering. As a CEEC Affiliated faculty, Banta has ongoing interests in developing strategies to create biochemicals from CO2 using renewable electricity (electrofuels) or from industrial process streams. He also recently started a company, Ironic Chemicals LLC, with Professor and CEEC co-Director Alan West in chemical engineering to create biofuels using copper mining waste.
Banta began teaching at Columbia Engineering in 2004. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral researcher at The Center for Engineering in Medicine at the Shriners and Massachusetts General Hospitals and Harvard Medical School. He earned a BSE in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 1997, and a MS and PhD in chemical engineering from Rutgers University in 2000 and 2002, respectively.