Dr. Luc Duchesne is an entrepreneur and a scientist fully engaged in the bioeconomy. He has received a PhD from the University of Guelph in 1988, a MSc from the University of Toronto in 1985 and a B. Sc. in Forestry from Laval University in Quebec City in 1983. Since 2004, he has been the President and CEO of forest BioProducts Inc, a firm conducting project development in bioproducts. He was the Chief Business Development officer for DynaMotive Energy Systems Corporation from 2003 to 2004. He was a research scientist for Natural Resources Canada from 1990 to 2003. He has been instrumental in mainstreaming the bioproducts industry, particularly in rural and First Nation communities. He has taught undergraduates and graduates at eight universities as an adjunct professor including the Université de Moncton where he is engaged in setting up an industrial chair in agroforestry.
Dr. Duchesne is widely published in a broad range of disciplines such as forest economics, bio-energy, bio-technology, molecular biology, entomology, pathology, microbiology, old-growth forests, fire ecology, and non-timber forest products. He is the author or co-author of 85 book chapters and scientific articles, and has presented numerous lectures in symposia, international and national meetings. Among his many publications he has co-authored the book “Bioproducts from Canada’s forests: New partnerships in the Bioeconomy” which has recently been published by Springer.
Dr. Robert Dekker originally hails from Austrailia. He is the Founding Director of the Biorefining Research Initiative at Lakehead University and also holds a senior Ontario Research Chair in Biorefining. His field of research expertise is in biotechnology where he has worked for some 40 years on various topics related to non-medical biotechnology including the biodegradation of plant cell walls using microbial species and their enzyme systems, polysaccharides from plants, and bacteria and fungi, and the bioconversion of plant biomass, mainly lignocellulosic residues resulting from processing of agricultural crops and forestry wastes. Dr. Dekker is well published and has presented his research at conferences all over the world.
Dr. Mat Leitch is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Forestry and the Forest Environment Lakehead University and an award-winning wood scientist. Dr. Leitch specialty is wood ultrastructure as well as tree biochemistry and he is lending his expertise to industry to help grow the next generation of forest products entrepreneurs.
Terry Bigsby was born in 1962 in Salmon Arm, BC. Growing up, he traveled around the world with his dad and his father's job (a university engineering professor) took the family to Kenya, Egypt, then back to Canada. He completed his BA at the University of Alberta and was teaching in Alberta when he decided to move on to other things. After his VW restoration shop in Vancouver failed, a victim of high overhead and tight margins, Terry ended up teaching shop at Vernon Secondary School. There he convinced his long time friend, Claus, to accept a position at VSS. Terry and Claus worked together in the Industrial Arts Department for many years where they chatted about making wooden cutlery, better than the cutlery they saw on German TV - and launched Aspenware.
