Algae biofuel company Sapphire Energy Inc. has a new chief financial officer.

The company announced today that it has hired Thomas Willardson to head financial planning, accounting, insurance, legal and investor relations for the San Diego-based company.

"Sapphire Energy is continuously looking to grow its team of highly regarded experts, and we're very pleased to welcome Tom on board," Cynthia Warner, CEO and chairwoman of Sapphire Energy, said in a statement. "His vast experience in successfully defining financial roadmaps for companies -- from private, investor-funded startups to large public companies -- makes him distinctly qualified to serve as our CFO."

Willardson has worked in the energy field for several years. He most recently was CFO at Aurora Algae Inc., maker of algae-based products for pharmaceutical, nutrition, aquaculture and fuels markets. Before that he was CFO at Energy Recovery Inc., which designs and develops energy recovery devices for desalination and other processes. He led the company's initial stock offering.

He's also been at Cost Plus Inc., the specialty retail store chain, where he supervised financial initiatives including a restructuring of bank credit lines. He's been at software company Visual Sciences and Archimedes Technology Group, a privately funded nuclear waste remediation technology company.

He holds a bachelor's degree in finance from Brigham Young University and an MBA from the University of Southern California.

Sapphire Energy is working on a product it calls Green Crude, which it says has the "potential to profoundly change America's energy and petrochemical landscape for the better." Sapphire's products are made from algae and cyanobacteria. The company has a research and development facility in Las Cruces, N.M., and is operating the first integrated algal biorefinery in Columbus, N.M.