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 also funded by FORMAS, ÅForsk, SLF and SSF – The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research after being evaluated to have a great potential for our society. 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.
Antonino Biundo
PhD, Postdoctoral researcher
SciLifeLab and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
antonino.biundo@scilifelab.se
Ciao! My name is Antonino. I come from Italy but I spent the last 5 years in Austria working at both the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences and the Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology, previously for my PhD, and afterwards as a Postdoc. My PhD project was on the optimization of enzymes in order to improve their esterase activity for polymer modification. In the meantime, I have also worked with members of the oxidoreductase family, namely laccases and tyrosinases. From March 2018 I started a postdoc position in Per-Olof’s group in Systems Biocatalysis, focusing on the biological conversion of side-streams from forestry and on the engineering and bioinformatical design of enzymes.
Tamás Görbe
PhD, Postdoctoral researcher
Wallenberg Wood Science Center
SciLifeLab and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Hey, I am Tamas, and originally come from Hungary. I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Szeged, where I worked on synthetic drug development. After my graduation, I have joined the research group of Jan-E. Backvall at Stockholm University, where I did my Ph.D. studies on the field of biocatalysis and protein engineering. My work was focused on the development of chemoenzymatic kinetic resolution and dynamic kinetic resolution of alcohols and amines. During my Ph.D. time, I got the opportunity to do an internship at the Frances H. Arnold’s lab at Caltech, where I was able to learn and apply the directed evolution technique on the oxidoreductase family. After my graduation, I have joined the Per-Olof’s group as a postdoc, where I am working on systems biocatalysis and bioinformatics within the Wallenberg Wood Science Center.
Oscar Skirfors
Project worker, microbiology and protein engineering
SciLifeLab, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
oscar.skirfors@scilifelab.se
Hello! My name is Oscar and I’m originally from Nyköping Sweden, but I have been living in Stockholm for a couple of years. I am currently in the middle of my education in biotechnology at KTH and have gotten the opportunity to stay as a summer worker in the group.
Hailey Sounart
Project worker, synthetic biology
SciLifeLab, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
hailey.sounart@scilifelab.se
Hello! My name is Hailey and I am originally from Tucson, Arizona, USA, but lived most recently in the Bay Area, California where I completed my BS in Biology and BA in Dance at Mills College. I will begin my MSc in Molecular Techniques in Life Science this coming fall and have the opportunity to work in the Syrén lab this summer.
Maxime Robert-Monpate
Project worker, synthetic chemistry and biology
SciLifeLab, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
maxime.robert-monpate@scilifelab.se
“Bonjour ! My name is Maxime, I am a French student doing a summer internship in Per-Olof’s group as part of my degree in chemical engineering.”
Arne Stamm
PhD student
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
arne.stamm@scilifelab.se
Hej! My name is Arne, I am from Germany and I did my master’s in Nanoscience at the University of Hamburg. I started my PhD in March 2017 at the School of Chemical Science and Engineering at KTH in Stockholm. I am working on the polymerization of biopolymers using molecular building blocks from renewable sources, mainly focussing on monomers containing cycling subunits.
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.
Former group members
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.
Project on fundamental terpene biochemistries, writing PhD-thesis.
Gwenaëlle Charpentier
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.
