Scott Banta Ph.D. is Chair and Professor of Chemical Engineering.  He received his B.S.E. degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Rutgers University.  He did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Shriners and Massachusetts General Hospitals and Harvard Medical School.  He began his faculty career in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Columbia in 2004 and his research has focused on the engineering of proteins and peptides for various applications in areas including biocatalysis, bioelectrocatalysis, biomaterials, gene and drug delivery, biosensing, and bioenergy. His group is also developing new synthetic biology platforms for energy harvesting and conversion.