As director of the Energy Biosciences Institute, Dr. Chris Somerville oversees all open activities at the institute, including research, communications, education and outreach. He also chairs the institute's executive committee and reports to the governance board. Somerville is Philomathia Professor of Alternative Energy in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a visiting scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His research focuses on the characterization of proteins implicated in plant cell-wall synthesis and modification. He has published more than 200 scientific papers in plant and microbial genetics, genomics, biochemistry and biotechnology.

Somerville has served on the scientific advisory boards of many corporations, academic institutions, and private foundations in Europe and North America. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Canada.