My Beyond These Towers Story

Jennifer Headman ’01 recently shared her WPI alumni, Beyond These Towers story. The fermentation microbiology and molecular biology scientist spends her days working to help revitalize global agriculture and provide practical, plant-based alternatives to decrease the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Q. What is your current occupation?
A. I am currently the fermentation manager at POET Research. POET is the world’s largest producer of biofuels. As a leading company in the sustainable bioproducts industry, POET works diligently to develop fuels and technologies with the belief that every product that comes from a barrel of oil can instead be produced from plants grown in the earth’s soil. Everything POET does works towards our sustainability goal of our bioprocessing facilities being carbon neutral by 2050.

As fermentation manager in research, I work at the interface between our vendors and our bioprocessing facilities. Companies that innovate in the biofuels space bring us yeast, enzymes, and other fermentation additives that have been developed for our process -or that have shown promise at other bioprocessing facilities for testing. We then test them in our lab, using our processes and validate whether they show a benefit. We then suggest the top products to our operations team to be trialed in one or more bioprocessing facility. At the same time, my position also involves helping to troubleshoot.

It is extremely exciting seeing products that my team recommends being scaled up and performing well at large scale. Our goal is to use absolutely every part of a kernel of corn if possible, so introducing new technologies that will enable us to increase our ethanol and byproduct yield from our corn is at the heart of what we do. As with everything in life it is not always smooth sailing and figuring out how to help our bioprocessing facilities through opportunities that may arise with the minimal damage/loss possible is also an important part of my job.

Q. What drew you to WPI as a student, and how was your overall WPI education experience?
A. The summer between my high school Junior and Senior years of I participated in the Frontiers program at WPI. I fell in love with the campus, and really enjoyed my interactions with the students and professors who were part of that program. When I left the program, I decided to apply early decision to WPI and could not wait until I could get back on campus.
During my time at WPI, I was constantly challenged to become my best self. I learned through my classes and projects to be a member of a team and to work with many different types of people.

Q. How did being a member of Alpha Phi Omega (APO) impact your experience at WPI?
A. While at WPI I joined Alpha Phi Omega (APO), the national coed service fraternity. During one of my very first classes I saw a student, who would later become my Big Brother in the fraternity, wearing letters and when I later saw that there was going to be an information session for the organization decided to look into it. APO became my new home and has shaped my life significantly since I joined.

APO is an organization where everyone can find their place. You can be someone who is extremely outgoing on campus, or a shy introvert like I was when I joined and still be a contributing member of the chapter. After graduating, I went on to help restart the chapter at the University of Wisconsin- Madison during graduate school, became a presenter for APO’s leadership development program, served as a sectional chair, and am currently a regional chair in the organization.

Q. How have the education and life skills you gained at WPI gone on to serve you in your career?
A. Almost everything I do as an industrial microbiologist involves being part of a team. We team up with our vendors to bring the best products to our bioprocessing facilities, and we team up with our operations colleagues to help implement those products as well as help manage opportunities for improvement that arise during their implementation or during day-to-day operations. In the laboratory, the group of people with whom I work are also a very strong team. We work together extremely well to make sure that we are producing quality scientific results in an expedient manner.

Q. Looking back, what was the most valuable experience or lesson learned at WPI that continues to shape your life today?
A. Besides teamwork, I think the most valuable experience that I learned at WPI was to stay flexible. Every term looked different and changing schedules every seven weeks helped me to learn to adapt to changing conditions in the workplace. Industry sometimes moves at a dizzying pace, and something that you may have worked on for several months or even years can be rendered irrelevant because of changing market conditions and crush margins. You then may have to be able to pick that back up quickly when the industry re-enters a positive margin environment. Stay flexible, work with your team, and be the best you that you can be. My entire experience at WPI helped me learn to interact with many different types of people, and this has served me well in my career.

Q. Is there anything else you’d like to share?
A. During graduate school at the University of Wisconsin- Madison I had the opportunity to live in Denmark for almost a year as a Fulbright Scholar. I don’t think I would have even considered the opportunity if it wasn’t for my experience living in Germany the summer between my Junior and Senior year at WPI. It was in Denmark that I was truly exposed to fermentation, as prior to that experience I was mostly focused on genetic engineering of yeast. My experiences abroad helped to shape my career both through the new skills they taught me, but also due to the different cultures I experienced while living abroad and have helped bring me to where I am today.

Jennifer was also featured in the WPI Journal. Read the Journal story here.