Dr. Charles Abbas is the Chair of the International Commission on Yeasts (ICY). He has served in this role since being elected in August 2012 for a 4-year term. He also has two academic appointments as an adjunct Professor in the Dept. of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering (BBE) at the U. of Minnesota in St. Paul, MN and as an adjunct Faculty in the Dept. of Food Science & Human Nutrition (FSHN) at the U. of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.

Charles received a B.S. in Microbiology from the U of Minnesota (Twin Cities), an M.S. in Microbiology from the U. of Montana (Missoula), completed the Ph.D. Biochemistry coursework requirements at the U. of Minnesota (St. Paul) and received a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Cell Science from the U. of Florida (Gainesville). After working as a post doctoral student at the U. of Florida (Gainesville), he began a 27 year career in industrial biotechnology first working at Difco R & D in Ann Arbor, MI as a senior scientist, and later as a group leader, manager and most recently as Director of Yeast and Renewables Research at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in Decatur, IL, U.S.A.

Dr. Abbas is the author of over 100 abstracts, scientific articles, book chapters and reviews, patents and patent applications. He is considered a leading expert in yeast, large-scale industrial fermentations, and biorefining. Charles is credited for proposing the widely used biorefinery term in early 1990s to illustrate the bioprocessing of commodity crops to high value added products; which is key to economic sustainability of the agricultural processing industry. His areas of expertise include: industrial biotechnology; fungal chemistry and biochemistry; biomass conversion; advanced biofuels and chemicals; bioprocessing of commodity crops and their residues to produce high value-added products; development of yeast strains for industrial fermentations; large-scale fermentation production of ethanol, polymers, amino acids, enzymes, vitamins, carotenoids and organic acids using bacterial, fungal, and algal systems.

Charles resides with his wife, Teresa, his daughter Andrea and granddaughter Autumn, in Champaign, ILL.