After 250 research articles, Jim Dumesic, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, usa, would much rather teach a classroom of seniors than promote a start-up company. But such is the commercial potential of his recent work that Dumesic now courts hard-nosed investors and earnest energy companies for venture capital and strategic partnerships for his start-up company, Virent Energy. The company's mission is to commercialise Dumesic's discovery of a process that could potentially unlock the use of one of the most benign forms of energy ever known