Industrial Biotransformations

Andreas Liese studied chemistry at Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn, Germany, where he received his PhD in 1998. He carried out his doctoral research at the Research Center Jülich, Germany, in close collaboration with DSM Research, Netherlands. From 1998 to 2003, he was assistant professor at the University of Bonn and at the same time head of the Enzyme Group within the Institute of Biotechnology II, Research Center Jülich. During a sabbatical in 2000 at Pfizer Global Research & Development, San Diego, USA, he initiated a R&D group on biocatalysis. From 2003 to 2004 he was associate professor at the University of Münster, and has been a full professor of technical biochemistry/biocatalysis at the Hamburg University of Technology as well as director at the Institute of Technical Biocatalysis since 2004. In 2003 he received the award for up-and-coming teachers in higher education in the field of biotechnology, awarded by DECHEMA, Germany. Professor Liese is a member of the "Biotechnology" steering committee of the DECHEMA e.V. and his special research interests are bioprocess engineering, enzyme technology and asymmetric biochemical synthesis.

Karsten Seelbach has been working as manager of the Supply Chain Department at Siegwerk Druckfarben AG since the end of 2002. He graduated from Bonn University, Germany, in chemistry / biotechnology in 1997. Before joining McKinsey as a senior consultant in 2001 he worked at Degussa AG in the Process Technology department, focusing on reaction kinetics, process optimization and up-scaling of reactions to production. Karsten Seelbach holds several patents, has published several journal papers, and is co-author of a book on industrial biotransformations.

Christian Wandrey carried out his doctoral research at the University of Hanover, receiving his PhD there in 1973, and where he was assistant professor from 1974 to 1977. Thereafter, he worked as associated professor at the University of Clausthal until 1979, when he was made Full Professor of Biotechnology/Chemical Engineering at the University of Bonn and Director at the Institute of Biotechnology at the Research Center Jülich, posts he still holds today.
Professor Wandrey is a recipient of the Technology-Transfer Prize, the Philip Morris Award, the Enzyme Engineering Award, and the Carl-Friedrich-Gauss-Medaille as well as the Wöhler Award. He has more than 300 scientific publications, 100 patents and patent applications, plus over 400 seminars to his name, and is the co-initiator of four start-up companies.
His special research interests are enzyme technology, fermentation technology, and downstream processing.