John Allen

John Allen is the conceiver, inventor, and co-founder of the Biosphere 2 project. As the Director of Biospheric Development for the project, Allen led the research and engineering necessary to create this vast materially closed life system, as well as the development of spin-off technologies. Currently the Chairman of Global Ecotechnics Corporation, an international project development and management company with a Biospheres Division working on the second generation of advanced materially closed biospheric systems and ecologically enriched biomic systems and its EcoFrontiers Division which owns and operates ecological projects in France, Australia, Puerto Rico and England. In the early 1960s, John worked on regional development projects with David Lillienthal's Development Resources Corporation in the U.S., Iran, and Ivory Coast, and before that headed a special metals team at Allegheny-Ludlum Steel Corporation which developed over thirty alloys to product status..Allen holds a degree in Metallurgical-Mining Engineering with honors from the Colorado School of Mines, an MBA from the Harvard Business School. His memoir was recently published.