Hi, I'm Dr. Stephen Mayfield, Director of the California Center for Algae Biotechnology and Professor of Biology at UC San Diego. I'm Doctor Ike Levine, President of the Algae Foundation and Professor at the University of Southern Maine, Department of Natural and Applied Sciences. The world today is facing a number of significant problems, including climate change, deforestation, degradation of our oceans and agricultural land, and an ever-increasing demand for food, feed, and fuel. There are no easy solutions to any of these challenges but one theme that runs through all of these is that we need to become much more efficient at the production and utilization of our energy, food, and consumer products while still protecting and preserving our natural resources. Algae is the most efficient organisms on the planet at turning carbon dioxide and sunlight into biomass. As such, algae have the potential to play an important role in addressing many of our most significant challenges. This course will cover the basics of algae biotechnology, from genomes and gene regulation to transformation technologies and product development. We will explore molecular technologies and metabolic engineering and green algae, diatoms, and cyanobacteria, as well as traditional breeding and selection in microalgae. We will also learn about product development and commercial technologies directly from the companies that are making products and algae. This course is produced by the Algae Technology Educational Consortium and UC San Diego with funding from the Algae Foundation, the National Renewable Energy Lab, and the US Department of Energy. Welcome to the Introduction to Algae Biotechnology.