THE TEAMS – iFermenter

Prof Nadav Bar

Coordinator

Prof Bar received a PhD in Engineering Cybernetics, and now teaches and applies modeling and feedback control in microbiology. He is currently a leader in several European projects, and the head of CyberGenome laboratory at the NTNU.

Per Inge Andersen

Financial advisor

Per Inge is a Financial and management adviser related to the EU framework programs for research and innovation Horizon 2020 EU programs that are closely linked to and/or financed by H2020.

His areas of competence are: Economics, finance and management accounting Project management and project leadership Marketing and market analysis Environmental issues and resource management Global development

Thais Mothe-Diniz

Project manager

Thais Mothe-Diniz has a PhD in Astronomy, Cand.Scient Astrophysics.

She has 16 years of experience as a researcher/research leader in Astrophysics and several years as a senior lecturer/professor and experience as advisor/coordinator. Long experience with planning, establishing and implementing national and international projects, both as project employee and project manager/coordinator.

Prof Sigurd Skogestad

Scientist

He received his PhD from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1987, He has been full professor at NTNU since 1987

He was Head of department of Chemical Engineering from 1999 to 2009. He is since 2015 the Director of the SUBPRO center for research-based innovation on subsea production and processing. His research interests include control structure design and plantwide control, optimal operation of process systems, modelling for control, robust control, PID control and distillation columns.

Shanaz Korneliussen

Financial officer

Shanaz is a financial officer in the finance division at NTNU specializing in Horizon 2020 funded activities.

She is currently responsible for over 25 research projects in both a partner and coordinator capacity. She is a certified public accountant in the state of California and is a former auditor with experience in the not for profit sector, Biotech, and Renewable energy industry. She has been working as a financial officer since January 2018.

Pedro Antonio Lira

Scientist

Pedro is process engineer, expert in chemical processes, modelling, simulations and real-time laboratory systems.

Together with Prof Bar, He has developed the microbial feedback control laboratory. Pedro has submitted his PhD thesis in May 2021 and works as a control scientist in iFermenter.

Andrea Tuveri

PhD candidate

Andrea Tuveri is a PhD candidate in Bar's lab. He develops software algorithms that serves as state estimators. These algorithms integrates real-time control systems into one unit.

Andrea has implemented the state estimators Extended Kalman filter, the Uncented Kalman filter in real time. He is currently working with Model Predictive control systems.

Alex Wong

PhD candidate

Alex Wong is a PhD candidate in the department of Biotechnology under the main supervision of Dr. Rahmi Lale. He is expert in microbial fermentation processes.

Currently, he is working on a novel fermentation system that is part of the iFermenter concept.

Dr. Christian Riedel

Biotechnologist

Dr. Riedel received a Doctoral Degree (Dr. rer. nat) and obtained his Habilitation ("venia legendi") for Microbiology.

He is teaching various course in the fields of microbiology, molecular biology, biotechnology and infection biology. Besides the project iFermenter, he is currently Work package leader in the ERA-IB2 consortium „SafeFood".

Oliver Goldbeck

Post doctoral

Expert in control of sugar transport and metabolite sensors

Dominik Weixler

PhD student

Prof Christoph Wittmann

Work Package 3 leader

Jens Christmann

PhD student

Holds a master's degree in Plant and Microbial Biotechnology from the TU Kaiserslautern, Germany.

After graduating in 2019, he started his PhD studies at the iSBio, Saarbrücken. During his studies, he gained experience in the field of molecular biology as well as in the establishment of entire bioprocesses. Within the iFermenter project, he deals with the characterization and targeted optimization of created production strains.

Peng Cao

PhD student

Received his master degree in chemical engineering (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2018)

Joined iSBio at Saarland University in August, 2018. Within the iFermenter project, he works on metabolic engineering of Corynebacterium glutamicum.

Prof Christoph Herwig

Work Package 4 leader

Bioprocess engineer from RWTH Aachen, worked in industry in the design and commissioning of large chemical facilities prior to enter his interdisciplinary PhD studies at EPFL, Switzerland in bioprocess identification.

Since 2008, he is full professor for biochemical engineering at the Vienna University of Technology. The research area focuses on the development of data science methods for integrated and efficient bioprocess development along PAT and QbD principles for biopharmaceuticals.

Julian Kager

Post Doctoral researcher

ulian holds an degree in biochemical engineering and during his Ph. D. he developed and deployed model based solutions in various biochemical processes.

His Simulation & Control Team is focused on the applicability of PSE (Process System Engineering) approaches in applied biotechnology, with various success stories for state estimation and control of Penicillium chrysogenum and E. coli upstream processes.

Peter Sinner

PhD candidate

Peter holds a master’s degree in Industrial Biotechnology from TU Munich. He joined the iFermenter project in May 2018 as a PhD student in the group of Prof Christoph Herwig at TU Wien.

His research focus is on model-guided bioprocess development, combining microbial fermentation technology and dynamic process modelling.

Assoc. Prof. Gerd Seibold

WP 2 leader

Assoc. Professor Gerd Seibold studied biotechnology in Univ og Colon, Germany.

Expert in genome modifications and metabolism of C. glutamicum

Tamara Weiss

PhD student

Jing Shen

Post doctoral scientist

I am a Postdoc in the Bacterial Fermentation Performance and Physiology Group.

I did my doctoral training at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and mainly worked in cell factory construction of Corynebacterium glutamicum. I am interested in the potential of synthetic biology for developing sustainable bioproduction processes.

Prof Maite Moreira

Environmental scientist

Professor of Chemical Engineering in the University of Santiago de Compostela (SPAIN).

She works in two research topics: (i) Environmental Biotechnology (2) LCA and carbon footprint. She has participated and/or coordinated various projects at National and European level in the field of LCA. These research activities have produced 240 SCI publications, 2 books, 15 book chapters, supervisor of 17 PhD theses, H-index: 46, Participant in 41 research projects and 29 research contracts with different companies.

Prof Gumersindo Feijoo

Scientist

Professor of Chemical Engineering and Vice-chancellor of Strategic Planning in the University of Santiago de Compostela.

His research activities have produced 18 doctoral theses, 5 patents and 1 register trademark, 4 books, 24 book chapters, 225 research papers in international journals, 36 research papers in national journals and 235 congress presentations (71 oral).

Prof Dzung Diep

Microbiologist

I am a molecular microbiologist by training. The main research theme in my group is molecular microbiology, and lactic acid bacteria....

as well as pathogens are organisms being studied. An important and recognized area of research from our group is antimicrobial peptides (bacteriocins) produced by many bacterial species. Their mode of action, target recognition, immunity, resistance development as well as gene regulation are some of the topics we have studied in great detail. Also of special interest is the development of bacteriocins into useful applications including food preservation and fighting infections and antibiotic resistance.

Karolien Maes

Process Engineer

She holds a master degree in bioengineering sciences (Ghent University, 2017)

with a major in chemistry and bioprocess technology. She is experienced with development and upscaling of fermentative production and downstream purification of new-to-nature biosurfactants from lab scale up to 15 m³ processes. She joined BBEPP as a process engineer after performing a Master dissertation there about the development of continuous fermentations, by applying cell retention.

Joke Ampe

R&D Engineer

Joke Ampe holds a master degree in Bio-Informatics with a specialization in bioscience engineering (Ghent University, 2018).

She joined BBEPP in March 2019 as an R&D engineer. She worked on a low-TRL project dealing with in situ product recovery of organic compounds. Recently, she made the switch to process engineer. She just finished her training and is looking forward to work on DSP development for the iFermenter project.

Zsófia Kádár

BBEPP Project Manager

Zsófia Kádár is an internationally experienced bioengineer. She has an M.Sc. in Bioengineering from Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE, Hungary, 1999) and a PhD in Chemical Engineering (BUTE, 2006).

She is specialized in industrial biotechnology, and has expertise in pre-treatment processes of lignocellulosic biomass, fermentation technology, especially in fermentations combined with a microbiological and analytical background. She has participated in several EU and Danish national founded projects as WP leader and project manager. She was also national representative of EERA (European Energy Research Alliance) – Bioenergy Program, Sugar platform. Since 2019 she is working at BBEPP as a Project Acquisition Coordinator.

Dr. Daniel Muller

CEO MyBiotech, Work package 1 leader

Daniel is the CEO and Co-founder of MyBiotech GmbH. He made his PhD at the Institute of Biochemical Engineering (Prof. Dr. Elmar Heinzle) at University of Saarland.

He has extensive experience in research and teaching in the field of biotechnology. During his Post-Doc time he was actively involved in coordination and project management in several research projects at national and European level. He was Laboratory head with one of the leading German CROs, Pharmacelsus GmbH. There, he was in charge of various customer projects in the biotech and pharma industry. He managed and implemented GLP- and GLP-compliant projects and was moreover responsible for the project management of research projects with industrial and academic partners. He then changed into the field of biotech business development. In this role, he was responsible for sales and marketing activities and strategies and worked together with the leading biotech and pharma companies in the DACH region.

Eric Abellan

Software developer

gained his Bachelor in Life Sciences & Technologies in 2007 at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), and subsequently his Master Degree In Biotechnology in 2009 at Swiss Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ)

After working as project and business development Manager in a Life Sciences and healthcare marketing consulting company, he joined INFORS HT as a product manager for bioreactors in 2012. During this time, he was in charge of the product portfolio bioreactors and was project leader in an EU-funded Eureka project. After 2 years, he gave up this position to focus on the development of the new bioprocess software as product owner and product manager. During this time he was also was project leader of 2 Swiss-funded CTI projects related to this software.

Dr. Dirk Hebel

Product Manager

holds a PhD in Biochemical Engineering from TU München, Germany. After graduating in 2013, he joined INFORS HT as Product Manager, assuming the responsibility for the bioreactor product portfolio.

In 2014, he took over the project leadership for INFORS HT in the EU-funded SYNPOL project (FP7 programme) in 2014 and managed the cooperation with the international partners. In 2017 his responsibilities were expanded to include the product ownership for the development of the Human Machine Interface (HMI) and for the INFORS HT incubation shakers.

Philippe Coszach

R&D manager

Philippe has been working for Galactic for close to 20 years where he largely contributed to the development of the company as lactic acid producer by fermentation.

He is now the R&D director, managing all aspects of fermentation, scale-up/ pilot Plant, purification/DSP for the company. He is also closely involved in the Futerro venture with Galactic, which mainly focuses on PLA production/know how from lactic acid. He holds Master diploma in Industrial Engineering & Chemistry, 1990. ISICH Mons, BE. - Master management of innovation, 2005. Polytech Mons, BE - Galactic SA. Presently R&D director

gudbrand Rødsrud

R&D manager

Oskar Bengtsson

Ph.D. in Applied Microbiology from Lund University in Sweden, specializing in microbial physiology, genetic engineering and metabolic engineering.

Then postdoc at NMBU, working on enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass and enzyme production. Research scientist at Borregaard since 2013, in charge of enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation. Currently Section Manager, Business Development R&D, at Borregaard.