William Frey, Ph.D., former global biofuels director at the DuPont Co. in Wilmington, and Sarad Parekh, Ph.D., once a Merck scientist, are among the big-company refugees now running Qteros Inc. (formerly Sun Ethanol), Amherst, Mass., which yesterday collected $25 million from oil giant BP, venture investor Battery Ventures, liberal billionaire speculator George Soros, and the Rockefeller-founded Venrock fund (which backed Intel, Apple, Centocor, and many more) to ramp up production of its "Q-microbe," which turns wood fiber (and corn and sugarcane waste) into alcohol fuel - a supplement and alternative to scarce petroleum.

Qteros, nurtured on Department of Energy and National Science Foundation grants, hopes the new Obama administration will make manufactured fuels more lucrative, says cofounder Jef Sharp. More in today's print PhillyDeals column here.