Taylor Energy is led by its founders, who bring a combined 80+ years of experience in energy conversion, gasification, and sustainable fuel systems. Together they have designed and built systems ranging from bench scale to pilot plant, and have secured and delivered on more than $5.4 million in competitive grant funding.
Deila Broberg Taylor
Founder & CEO | Principal Contracts and Grants Officer
Deila co-founded Taylor Energy over 30 years ago and has led the company as CEO ever since. With a B.S. in Biochemistry from Occidental College, graduate studies in Pharmacology and Toxicology at USC, and a Master of Education from Northcentral University, she brings a rigorous scientific foundation to the business side of renewable energy research. As an SBA-certified woman-owned small business, Taylor Energy reflects her commitment to building a serious, independent research operation from the ground up.
Deila oversees all aspects of business management, contract administration, and grant operations — including the successful fulfillment of four California Energy Commission awards totaling over $5.4 million. Her expertise in government contracts and grant compliance has been central to Taylor Energy’s ability to take on long-term, multi-phase research programs and see them through to published results.
Donald Gene Taylor
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer | Principal Investigator
Donald is the technical driving force behind Taylor Energy, with over four decades of hands-on experience in gasification, combustion, and waste-to-energy systems. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Occidental College and has spent his career solving complex energy conversion problems at scale — from troubleshooting a 49-MW plasma gasification plant in the UK for Air Products, to designing a 1,000 ton/day petcoke boiler for a Venezuelan refinery, to leading pilot plant construction for the U.S. EPA and the California Energy Commission. His work has spanned Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and joint ventures across the U.S., Japan, and beyond.
As Principal Investigator on all of Taylor Energy’s funded research, Donald has led the design, construction, and operation of nine completed gasification systems over his career. He holds eight issued patents — including two granted in 2023 — covering gasification, detonation-based energy systems, and carbonaceous feedstock conversion. His published work spans EPA reports, DOE studies, and California Energy Commission final reports, making him one of the most experienced independent gasification researchers in the country
GRANT COLLABORATORS
Taylor Energy works with a select group of leading researchers and energy specialists who collaborate on grant proposals and project fulfillment. Their expertise spans gasification, sustainable fuels, hydrogen production, combustion, and advanced energy systems.
Dr. Arun S. K. Raju
Co-Principal Investigator | Associate Director, CE-CERT, UC Riverside
Dr. Raju serves as Co-PI on several of Taylor Energy’s California Energy Commission grants, and is a research faculty member and Associate Director of Operations at the Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT) at UC Riverside — the same facility where Taylor Energy’s gasification plant is located. He also leads CE-CERT’s Sustainable Fuels Initiative, directing research on hydrogen, renewable natural gas, and biomass-to-energy systems.
Dr. Raju’s work encompasses energy systems analysis, techno-economic assessment, and life cycle evaluation of energy technologies. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from UC Riverside, is an inventor or co-inventor on eight pending and issued patents, and has served as Principal Investigator on local, federal, and international grants focused on alternative fuels and greenhouse gas reduction. He is also a winner of the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation (CCEMC) International Grand Challenge.
Dr. Kevin Whitty
Associate Dean for Research & Professor of Chemical Engineering | University of Utah
Dr. Whitty brings over 20 years of research experience in advanced energy technologies, including combustion, gasification, and chemical looping of both fossil and renewable fuels. He is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Associate Dean for Research at the University of Utah’s College of Engineering, and co-director of the university’s Industrial Combustion and Gasification Research Facility — a seven-reactor pilot-scale complex with thermal input up to 1.5 megawatts. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Åbo Akademi University in Finland and began his career managing R&D and pilot plant operations in industry before moving to academia.
Dr. Whitty has served as Principal Investigator on more than 40 government- and industry-sponsored research programs totaling over $12 million. His research group integrates experimental work with thermochemical and process modeling to bridge lab-scale findings and industrial-scale systems, and he has published dozens of papers on energy technology R&D.
Lyman J. Frost
In Memoriam | Former CEO, OxEon Energy | Grant Collaborator
Taylor Energy is grateful to have collaborated with Lyman Frost, a brilliant and generous colleague who contributed to our grant work and brought decades of hard-won expertise to every conversation.
Lyman was an energy technology executive and entrepreneur with deep experience across solid oxide fuel cells, electrolysis, hydrocarbon reforming, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, and gasification. Over his career he led R&D programs at Idaho National Laboratory, served as CTO of Western Hydrogen and Field Upgrading in Canada, and held senior roles at McDermott Incorporated, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and Ceramatec. He held a B.S. in Chemistry from Clemson University and an M.S. from Purdue, and was the holder of several patents in solid oxide fuel cells, gasification, and synthetic fuel technologies. He is deeply missed.
Prab Sethi
Consultant | Hydrogen Production & Renewable Energy Policy
Prab Sethi contributes to Taylor Energy grant proposals as a consultant specializing in hydrogen production. He brings nearly three decades of institutional knowledge from the California Energy Commission, where he served as Senior Project Manager and Natural Gas Program Manager from 1991 to 2020. In that role he led CEC’s hydrogen production cost-reduction and efficiency programs, and managed multi-million-dollar research portfolios spanning biomass, renewable natural gas, solar, wind, geothermal, and advanced breakthrough technologies. He has served as chair and member of technical evaluation committees assessing emerging energy technologies, and has contributed to both the Integrated Energy Policy Report and CEC’s RD&D Strategic Plan.