Biotechnology

Innovation is crucial to fulfil the potential of industrial biotechnology for sustainable production of fuels, chemicals, materials, food and feed. Similarly, scientific and technological advances in environmental biotechnology are needed to enable novel approaches to water purification, and ‘waste-to-product’ processes thus contributing to a circular economy. Increased fundamental knowledge encompassing enzymes, microorganisms and processes are essential for progress in this field. The Department of Biotechnology covers this research area and, based on new insights, selects, designs and tests new biobased catalysts, micro-organisms, and processes.

The department encompasses five research sections:

News

28 May 2020

Awards for three researchers of AS

It's raining awards at the Faculty of Applied Sciences. No less than three researchers have been rewarded with various prizes over the past period. They are Ad van Well, Arthur Gorter de Vries and Jasmijn Hassing. Together with colleagues from 3mE, Ad van Well (Radiation Science & Technology) received the Vanadium Award for the best scientific article of 2019 in the fiel of vanadium research . The award is presented by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) in Great Britain. The article stems from the HTM/NWO Nano-steel project, in which Ad van Well and his colleagues, especially PhD candidate Chrysoula Ioannidou, are researching a new type of steel that is both strong and malleable: pure ferrite reinforced with nanoparticles of vanadium carbide. Ex-researcher A rthur Gorter de Vries (Biotechnology) received the Westerdijk Award for the best dissertation of the year in the category Environmental & Applied Microbiology . This award is presented by the Royal Dutch Society for Microbiology (KNVM) and the Dutch Society for Medical Microbiology (NVMM). Gorter de Vries was frequently in the news before his promotion, among other things because he witnessed the emergence of a new gene in the lab and because of his discovery that all pilsner yeasts, the famous microorganisms that brewers produce hundreds of billions of litres of lager and other lager beers with every year, were created some 500 years ago in a one-off encounter between two types of yeast . Jasmijn Hassing, like Gorter de Vries from the group of Jean-Marc Daran (Biotechnology), received the Kiem Award. This prize is also awarded by the KNVM/NVMM, and is intended for excellent papers in which starting young microbiologists are the first authors. In order to qualify, the article must have been published in an internationally renowned journal in the past year. Hassing was awarded the prize for a paper on the production of 2-phenylethanol using yeast. 2-phenylethanol is an organic, aromatic compound that smells like roses and is widely used in the food and cosmetics industries.

News

07 April 2016

Two ERC Advanced Grants for TU Delft researchers

Two TU Delft researchers have been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant. Yuli Nazarov and Jack Pronk will both receive this European grant, which is only awarded to five-year projects conducted by internationally established research leaders. Higher-dimensional topological solids realized with multi-terminal superconducting junctions Prof. Yuli Nazarov of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience (Applied Sciences) will receive an ERC Advanced Grant of €1.5 million for his research proposal on HITSUPERJU (Higher-dimensional topological solids realized with multi-terminal superconducting junctions). His project focuses on topological materials: materials that exhibit the properties of conductors and insulators simultaneously in certain states. Topological materials were only discovered relatively recently, and they have since become a hot topic in the world of solid-state physics. These exotic materials are fundamentally interesting and also hold promise for concrete applications (such as a quantum computer based on Majorana fermions). However, they are very difficult to prepare and control. Yet some properties of topological materials can be closely simulated using a multi-terminal superconducting junction. Nazarov will put together a team of theorists to investigate this and formulate concrete suggestions for experiments and applications. Eliminating Oxygen Requirements in Yeasts Prof. Jack Pronk of the Department of Biotechnology (Applied Sciences) will receive an ERC Advanced Grant of €2.5 million to conduct research on the oxygen requirements of yeasts and fungi. The project, entitled ELOXY (Eliminating Oxygen Requirements in Yeasts), aims to shed light on the as yet unanswered question of why many yeasts and fungi need molecular oxygen. Even when these micro- organisms can obtain plenty of energy from anaerobic fermentation processes, they still need small amounts of oxygen - and nobody knows why. This conundrum is not only of scientific interest, but is also relevant for large-scale application of yeasts and fungi in anaerobic industrial processes.