Invited Speakers

Dr. Moritz von Stosch is a thought leader in the area of digital process development and manufacturing and author of more than 40 scientific publications, including the Book “Hybrid Modelling in Process Industries”. He is the Chief Innovation Officer at DataHow AG and prior to joining DataHow, led the Process Systems Biology & Engineering Centre of Excellence at GSK Vaccines, for which he received an Innovation Performance and Trust award.

Miguel Gama is Associate Professor with Habilitation at the Centre of Biological Engineering (CEB) of the University of Minho. Published so far 213 papers, corresponding to an h-index of 51 (Scopus), edited 4 books, co-organized 5 editions of an International Symposium on Bacterial NanoCellulose (BNC) and supervised 24 PhD projects. He is the leader of a research group – FUNCARB (https://www.ceb.uminho.pt/funcarb) – which aims to develop new biomaterials and tools for biomedical application, based on carbohydrates. In recent years, FUNCARB has been mainly dedicated to BNC fundamental research, knowledge translation and technology transfer, such as identification of new producing strains and improving others by genetic engineering; studying its supramolecular structural organization; optimization of its fermentation process; scaling-up the process; life cycle analysis; developing of applications in other areas, such as textile, food and cosmetics.

Shunsuke Sato is the Head of CO2 innovation Laboratory in KANEKA and an expert in the field of Molecular biology and fermentation technology. Dr Sato has been worked for KANEKA corporation for 20 years and researched about molecular breeding of bacterial cell and fermentation technology process development for PHA production. He had worked as a guest researcher in Muenster University, Germany, for 2 years (2013-2015). He studied about PHA production from waste glycerol derived from bio-diesel fuel production by using Shimwellia strain. Most recently he is involved in industrialization of PHA production project of KANEKA corporation in Japan and stared NEDO project for Biopolymer production using CO2 as carbon source by Hydrogen Oxidizing Bacteria.

Kevin O Connor is a Full professor of Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology at UCD and Director of BiOrbic SFI bioeconomy research centre, headquartered at University College Dublin, Ireland. His research interests are sustainable production and consumption, integrated biorefining, and biobased products. He is a former chairperson of the Scientific committee for the public-private partnership Biobased Industries Joint undertaking "BBIJU" and a current member of the scientific committee for the BBIJU successor "Circular Biobased Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU)" which focuses on the scale up of biobased technologies to accelerate their market uptake. He collaborates with Irish government departments on strategic development in the area of the Bioeconmy. He has published over 130 international peer review articles and made of over 200 contributions at national and international conferences.  He is the founder of two spin out companies - Bioplastech a technology development company for biodegradable polymers and Nova Mentis which produces a novel antioxidant with health promoting properties. He is driving development of pilot and demonstration scale facilities in Ireland. 

Tim Börner is Senior Scientist and Managing Director of the Sustainable Polymers Competence Cluster at Empa, Switzerland. His research activities are value chain overarching and investigate the design, production, implementation, recycling and end-of-life as well as sustainability assessment of lifecycle engineered (bio)polymers made from renewable resources. With a background in biotechnology and seven years industry experiences, he is interested in leveraging enzyme, microbial and fermentation technologies to create integrated bio-hybrid manufacturing pathways that support the transition to a viable and circular bioeconomy. Tim also supports start-ups, SME's and NGOs as scientific and strategic advisor. He received his PhD in Biotechnology from Lund University in 2016.

Alan Werker is an environmental engineer with more than 30 years of experience in both academic and industrial research and development.  Most research focus has been an interdisciplinary mix of bioprocess engineering and materials science.  Efforts are in fundamental as well as practical upscaling process developments for water quality engineering in combination with renewable resource supply chains, production, and recovery – namely polyhydroxyalkanoate (bioplastic) production and quality control.  Currently, he is owner and consultant with Promiko AB (Sweden), a research theme leader with Wetsus (The Netherlands), and an Adjunct Professor, School of Chemical Engineering, the University of Queensland (Australia). 

Dieter Jendrossek is a Professor of Microbiology and Biochemistry at University Stuttgart, Germany. He is the chairman of the VAAM-section “Microbial Cell Biology”. His scientific topics are on PHA depolymerases, PHB granule formation, (mono-)terpene catabolism in Pseudomonads, Polyisoprene degradation by microbial rubber oxygenases RoxA, RoxB, Lcp, Bacterial polyphosphate metabolism and polyP kinases (PPKs), (non) and biodegradability of hydrocarbon polymers (PE, PP, PS, PVC).

Auxi Prieto received her PhD in Pharmacy in the year 1995 from the Complutense University of Madrid. Currently is Full Professor at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Platform for Sustainable Plastics towards a Circular Economy-SusPlast (www.susplast-csic.org) of CSIC, gathering multidisciplinary researcher groups devoted to implement plastic circularity. At the Biological Research Center-Margarita Salas (CIB-CSIC) she is the Head of the Polymer Biotechnology group that aims to explore and exploit the bacterial abilities to produce and biodegrade bio-based polymers in order to contribute to global sustainability, using tools of molecular biology combined with omic technologies and synthetic biology.

Professor Manfred Zinn studied Biotechnology at ETH Zurich, where he also received his PhD in the research group of Prof. Bernard Witholt studying polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) biosynthesis in continuous cultures. Between 1997 and 2001 he was research associate at the University of Tennessee (Prof. DC White) and at Harvard University (Prof. R. Mitchell) at Cambridge, U.S.A. studying the biofilm formation on solid surfaces. Back in Switzerland, he did a postdoc at Eawag Dübendorf in the group of Prof. Thomas Egli focusing on multiple nutrient limited growth conditions of bacteria. From 2002 until 2011 he was group leader at Empa St. Gallen, developing PHAs for medical applications. Since 2011 he is Professor in Biotechnology at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (HES-SO Valais-Wallis) and teaching Bioprocess Engineering at EPF Lausanne. At HES-SO Valais-Wallis (Sion) he is leading the research group Biotechnology and Sustainable Chemistry and his research is focused on designing bioprocesses using sustainable and waste substrates (e.g., syngas and CO2), scale up of bioprocesses from micro- to pilot scale (300 L) using process analytical technology and processing of PHAs for medical (e.g., drug delivery by nano- and micro-capsules) and industrial applications (e.g., surface functionalization). Prof. Zinn has published more than 105 papers, 9 book chapters and proceedings, and is Specialty Chief Editor of the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology and on the editorial boards of Applied Environmental Biotechnology as well as International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation. He is also active in the Euorpean Federation of Biotechnology (board member and chairman of the Division Biobased Materials) and in the non-profit organization Go!PHA.

Jasmina Nikodinovic-Runic is a full research professor, and an Eco-biotechnology and Drug Development group leader at Institute of Molecular Genetics and Genetic Engineering, University of Belgrade. She conducts research in the field of molecular genetics of bacteria, directs the evolution of enzymes, isolates and characterizes novel biocatalysts, converts petrochemical plastic monomers to biopolymers (PHA), and works on biotechnological process optimizations. Her research interests include microbial biotechnology, biocatalysis, bacterial bioactive secondary metabolites, and novel bio-materials. The group is active in eco-green molecular biotechnologies and in the design and optimization of bioactive molecules. She has co-authored more than 200 scientific articles, 4 book chapters and holds 5 patents in the field of biotechnology.

Jochen Schmid is a Full professor of Microbiology at the University of Münster, Germany and managing Director of the Institute of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, including the biotechnological pilot plant. His research interests are sustainable biotechnological production processes with a special focus on microbial polysaccharides, including modifying their chemical structures using synthetic biology approaches. He has published over 75 international peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and made several contributions at national and international conferences. He is the founder of the spin-off company – CASCAT GmbH, a technology development company for biobased products from carbohydrates using enzymatic cascade reactions. 

Kumar Sudesh is a professor at the School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), and a Research Fellow of the National Institute of Biotechnology Malaysia (NIBM). He received his PhD in molecular biology from the Saitama University, Japan in 1999. Following this, he pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at RIKEN under the supervision of Prof. Yoshiharu Doi. He then joined the School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) as a lecturer of Microbiology and Biotechnology in 2001. Sudesh Kumar is well-known for his research on bio-based and biodegradable plastics produced by microbes, polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA).

To date, 42 MSc and 43 PhD students have graduated under his supervision. With more than 250 scientific publications and 10 granted patents, he is among the top research scientists in Malaysia. He has an h-index of 61 with more than 18,000 citations based on Google Scholar. He is also the Chief Editor of the Malaysian Journal of Microbiology and an elected Fellow of the Academy of Sciences, Malaysia (FASc).

Kumar Sudesh has had many successful collaborations with both international and national partners. He has been awarded many prestigious research grants including from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia (MoHE). His research of over 30 years on PHA bioplastics is currently at the level of commercial transition (TRL 7) and technology demonstration (TRL 8). He is currently consulting with industry partners to scale up PHA production in Malaysia.

Mark van Loosdrecht is Professor in Environmental Biotechnology at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. He graduated (MSc/PhD) from Wageningen University in 1988, after which he started as assistant professor at Delft University of Technology. In 1999 he was appointed as full professor. His research is characterized by the combination of scientific understanding of complex microbial systems and development of new processes. Dr. van Loosdrecht’s scientific interests are mainly related to biofilm processes, nutrient conversion processes and the role of storage polymers in microbial ecology. In particular, he is interested in new processes related to wastewater treatment and resource recovery. The research in his group has resulted in several processes currently applied at full-scale such as the BCFS process, Sharon process, Anammox process and Nereda process as well as processes for PHA, EPS and phosphate recovery from wastewater. He obtained several awards for his work, including the Lee Kuan Yew Singapore Water Prize, Stockholm Water Prize, Spinoza award and the IWA Grand Award. He obtained an honorary doctorate from ETH-Zurich and University of Ghent. He is member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Dutch Academy of Engineering (NL-NAE) and the US National Academy of Engineering (US-NAE). He was awarded a knighthood in the order of the Dutch Lion. He has published over 1000 scientific papers, has 20 patents and has supervised over 100 PhD students.

Professor Ipsita Roy is an expert in microbial biotechnology, natural biobased materials, and their biomedical and environmental applications. Professor Roy was awarded the prestigious Inlaks Scholarship to study for her Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, UK. At Cambridge, she was awarded scholarships including the Churchill College Scholarship and the Cambridge University Philosophical Society Fellowship Award. Her postdoctoral work was at the University of Minnesota, USA. She has published over 100 papers in high ‘Impact Factor’ journals and has an H index of 53. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3). Her group is focussed on the production of novel natural and sustainable polymers such as Polyhydroxyalkanoates, Bacterial cellulose, g-Polyglutamic acid, Alginate and their biomedical and environmental applications. She is an editor of Scientific Reports and Biomedical Materials. Her total grant portfolio is more than 14 million pounds. She has many patents, and she has spin out company called PHAsT, focused on the production of medical grade PHAs for biomedical applications.

Marianna Villano has been associate professor of Chemical Engineering at the Department of Chemistry of Sapienza University of Rome since January 2022. She obtained her Master of Science (5-year degree) with honors in Industrial Chemistry in 2007, and a PhD in Industrial Chemical Processes in 2011, defending the thesis “Microbially catalyzed production of hydrogen and methane in bioelectrochemical systems". She is co-chair of the “Valorization of organics” working group of the Environmental Biotechnology section of the European Federation of Biotechnology (EB-EFB), and elected member (since September 2021) of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Microbial Electrochemistry and Technology (ISMET, https://is-met.org/).

Her main research activities focus on the development of biotechnological processes for waste management and resource recovery. In particular, she investigates mixed microbial culture-based processes for the treatment and simultaneous valorization of waste and wastewater. Her expertise includes the design and operation of chemical and biological reactors (batch and continuous); the production of bio-based and biodegradable polymers (i.e., polyhydroxyalkanoates, PHA) from both synthetic and waste feedstocks; and the application of innovative microbial electrochemical technologies for biofuels generation (i.e., H2, CH4), chemicals production, biogas upgrading, and control of the products spectrum in acidogenic fermentation. In the frame of these research activities, Marianna Villano has participated to several national and international projects, either as investigator or scientific responsible of the Sapienza research unit, including the European H2020 project “USABLE Packaging” (Unlocking the potential of SustainAble BiodegredabLE Packaging, 2019-2022) and the European HE project “AgriLoop” (Pushing the frontier of circular agriculture by converting residues into novel economic, social and environmental opportunities, 2022-2026).

Overall, Marianna Villano is author of more than 80 international peer-review international journal publications, 6 book chapter, and over 50 presentations to international conferences.