Per-Olof Syrén

 

Associate Professor in Chemistry for Life Sciences

Docent in Biotechnology

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

per-olof.syren@biotech.kth.se

 

 

Per-Olof Syrén obtained his PhD in Biotechnology in 2011 from KTH. After a postdoctoral stay as an Alexander von Humboldt-fellow at the University of Stuttgart, Germany between 2011-2013 he came back to Sweden to build his own research group. Supported by a Swedish Research Council (VR) Young Investor grant (less than 5% success rate), and committed to his passion to understand fundamental biochemistry, he has built his own small and independent research group from scratch at Science for Life Laboratory in Stockholm. His research is funded by the Gunnar Sundblad Research Foundation, FORMAS, VINNOVA, KVA, ÅForsk, SLF, VR and SSF – The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research after being evaluated to have a great potential for our society. His research benefits from generous support from industry, including the Swedish forest company Holmen and the US-based biotech company ATUM. His projects have attracted private grants from both Sweden (Royal Academy of Sciences, Wennergren Foundation) and Germany and have won several awards, including an internationally prestigious Alexander von Humboldt award and a Gordon conference research award. He was nominated to represent the Alexander von Humboldt foundation at the Nobel Laureate meeting in Chemistry 2013 in competition with thousands of other young scientists globally. In 2019 he was awarded the the Gunnar Sundblad Research Foundation’s prestigious Skills Development Prize. The prize was awarded by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

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Senior Researchers and postdocs

 

Wissam Farhat was born and raised in a lovely town near the sea called Ansariyeh in Lebanon. He received the Bachelor degree in Biochemistry and the Master’s degree in Cancer Biology from the Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon, in 2013 and 2015, respectively. During his Master studies, he completed nine months of internship at the American University of Beirut (AUB) where he conducted an in vivo study aimed to highlight the effects of smoke-mediated pathology on the cardiovascular system. For professional growth as an academic scholar and researcher in science, he pursued his Doctoral studies in the area of polymer and biomaterial science, under a joint supervision between North Carolina State University, department of forest biomaterials, USA, and Lyon University, laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering (IMP), France. The bulk of his thesis work was focused on the design of new biomaterial approaches for applications that interact with humans or the environment, this includes drug delivery scaffolds and stimuli-responsive gels. Having been awarded his Ph.D. degree in September 2018, he joined the Per-Olof’s group as a postdoctoral associate in October 2018. His current work focuses on the development new biomaterials within the School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health at KTH.

Boyang Guo

 

PhD, Postdoctoral researcher

SciLifeLab and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

boyangg@kth.se

Hi! My name is Boyang (or you can just call me Sissi!), I was born in China, but I have spent the last ten years studying and working in Japan. I finished my Master’s and Ph.D. in Shinshu University and during that time, my work was focused on targeting and engineering a beta-glucosidase from Trichoderma reesei for disaccharide synthesis via transglycosylation reaction.

In 2016, I moved to the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science as a postdoctoral researcher fellow in the Bioplastic Research Team and performed chemical library screening looking for potential monomers that can be polymerized by laccases. In 2018, I transferred to the Biomacromolecules Research Group and developed a novel method of DNA/protein delivery for genetic modification in rice.

From 2019, I moved to Sweden, joining Per-Olof´s group, and I am now working on a project relevant to bio-based plastic degradation.​

Caroline Mosbech

 

PhD, Postdoctoral researcher

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

and Wallenberg Wood Science Center.

mosbech@kth.se

Hi, I am Caroline from Denmark. I attained my master’s degree in Biotechnology at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and became very interested in environmentally sustainable solutions and how to make full use of our recourses. I therefore did my PhD in Section for Protein Chemistry and Enzyme Technology at DTU, focusing on enzymes improving fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass. In November 2019 I started a postdoc position in Per-Olof´s group. Here I will continue to pursue my interest and work on developing enzymes for valorization of wood and plant derived components.

Patricia Saenz-Mendez

PhD, Senior Researcher

SciLifeLab and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

patricia.saenz-mendez@scilifelab.se

Hola! My name is Patricia and I come from Uruguay. I graduated in my home Country (Universidad de la República) as a Pharmaceutical Chemist (Professional Degree), and then I earned my Master degree in Organic Synthesis and Medicinal Chemistry. Afterwards, My PhD program combined both Organic Chemistry and Computational Chemistry, mixing organic synthesis, biotransformations and quantum chemistry to study the oligomerization of cyclitols. Then, I moved to Sweden (Örebro University) for one year as a Postdoc, to work in Computational (Bio)Chemistry, in the drug design field and also in the computational study of lignin in the context of biorefineries. I was appointed then as an Associate Professor of Computational Chemistry in Uruguay, but I moved again to Sweden as a Marie Curie Fellow to work at the University of Gothenburg in the computational design of novel antibiotics against resistant bacteria. And now, from October 2018 I started a researcher position in Per-Olof´s group, focusing mainly in the computational design of enzymes for the recycling of textile fibers.

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PhD-students

Natalie Hendrikse

PhD student

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB, Stockholm, Sweden

natalie.hendrikse@sobi.com

My name is Natalie, I come from The Netherlands and I finished my master’s in Medical Engineering at KTH here in Stockholm in June 2016. I am now an industrial PhD student working at the KTH School of Chemical Science and Engineering as well as Sobi, a Swedish biopharmaceutical company specialized in orphan diseases. Both are situated at SciLifeLab in Solna. My project is about designing and engineering enzymes for therapeutic applications, such as treatment of certain rare genetic diseases. Recently, I started working with bioinformatics and especially phylogenetics and ancestral sequence reconstruction of enzymes.

David Hueting

PhD student

SciLifeLab and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

david.hueting@scilifelab.se

Hi! my name is David. I am from the Netherlands, where I have finished my Masters at the Technical University of Delft and Erasmus University Rotterdam in Nanobiology.
During my studies I worked on a variety of projects ranging from growing synthetic cells to the molecular mechanism behind CRISPR/Cas. During these projects I grew a great interest in the correlation between protein structure and function. In October 2019 I started my PhD on protein engineering in the Syrén lab and the lab of prof. Hjalmar Brismar. I am working on  engineering of enzymes and the effects that changes in structure have on enzyme activity and dynamics in the cell.

Karen Schriever

PhD student

SciLifeLab and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

karen.schriever@scilifelab.se

Hej! My name is Karen – I come from Germany and finished my Master of Biochemistry at the University of Heidelberg in summer 2018. During my Master degree, I have worked with different types of proteins and protein engineering methods. I started my PhD in the Protein Engineering of Enzymes group in October 2018. In my project I will focus on enzyme engineering and biocatalytic pathways at the interface to metabolic engineering.

 

Diploma students

 

Philip Josephson

Diploma student, fundamental terpene biochemistries.

SciLifeLab and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

phijos@kth.se

 

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Former group members

Antonino Biundo

Postdoctoral researcher, biocatalytic upgrading of terpenes.

Laiqing Xu

Project worker, synthetic biology.

Sara Ericsson

Project worker, enzyme engineering of plastic degrading enzymes.

Liliya Vasilevich

Project worker, biopolymers.

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

 

Johan Granath

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

Bachelor student, fundamental terpene biochemistries (2019).

 

Oscar Skirfors

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

Project worker, microbiology and protein engineering (2018).

 

Hailey Sounart

SciLifeLab

Project worker, synthetic biology (2018).

 

Maxime Robert-Monpate

ESCOM – Superior School of Organic and Mineral Chemistry in Compiègne, France.

Project worker, synthetic chemistry and biology (2018).

 

Maryam Mousa

Stockholm University, Sweden.

Project on monomeric building blocks from renewable sources for further polymerization (2018).

 

Charlotte Kürten

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

PhD-thesis on fundamental terpene biochemistries.

 

Gwenaëlle Charpentier

ESCOM – Superior School of Organic and Mineral Chemistry in Compiègne, France.

Project on ancestral terpene cyclases (2017).

 

Adam Eriksson

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

Project on fundamental terpene biochemistries (2017).

 

Lauren Lyne

Karolinska Institute, Solna, Sweden.

Project on characterization of ancestral terpene cyclases (2017).

 

Martin Toul

Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.

ERASMUS student. Project on biocatalysis and mechanisms of enzyme catalysis (2016).