Jonathan Trent

After receiving his Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Dr. Trent spent six years in Europe at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich, Germany; the University of Copenhagen; Denmark, and the University of Paris at Orsay, France.  He returned to the USA as a Research Fellow at the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine at Yale Medical School for two years before establishing a biotechnology group at Argonne National Laboratory.  In 1998 he moved to NASA Ames Research Center to be part of NASA’s Astrobiology program and in 1999 he founded the Bio-Nanotechnology Group.  In 2007, with support from Google, he began research into “Sustainable Energy for Spaceship Earth,” which led to the OMEGA project.  From 2010-2013 he led the multidisciplinary OMEGA research group as the project scientist and project manager.  In addition to working at NASA, he is concurrently an Adjunct Professor in both the Dept. of BioMolecular Engineering a UC Santa Cruz and in the Dept. of Biotechnology and Life Sciences at Tokyo University for Agriculture and Technology.  He is also a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences and the Founding Director of the OMEGA Global Initiative (OGI).