Braunwald Course

Prof. Christoph Wittmann, Saarland University, Germany

Prof. Dr. Christoph Wittmann is Professor and Director of the Institute of Systems Biotechnology at Saarland University (www.isbio.de). He has more than 150 peer-reviewed journal papers and holds 20 patents. His research interests comprise systems biology and systems metabolic engineering of bacteria, yeast and fungi with a focus on white biotechnology, fluxomics, metabolomics, and in-silico pathway simulation.

Prof. Elmar Heinzle is Senior Professor of Biochemical Engineering at the Saarland University, Germany

Prof. Elmar Heinzle studied Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the Technical University of Graz, Austria. After many years of research and teaching at the ETH Zürich he moved to Saarland University. He is founding member of the Center for Bioinformatics and member of the Center of Human and Molecular Biology both of the Saarland University. Throughout his carreer he was working on modelling and simulation of bioreactors and cells, covering a broad range of areas including bioprocess simulation. In recent years, he focuses on metabolic engineering and systems biology of mammalian cells. He published more than 220 peer-reviewed papers, 4 books and holds 10 patents.

Dr. Steffen Klamt, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems, Magdeburg, Germany

Dr. Steffen Klamt is group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems in Magdeburg and author of more than 60 peer-reviewed papers. His group develops and applies computational methods for Systems Biology and Systems Metabolic Engineering. In particular, he developed CellNetAnalyzer, a comprehensive MATLAB package with graphical user interface providing numerous algorithms for the in silico analysis and rational (re)design of metabolic networks. He collaborates with biological and industrial partners to improve the performance of microbial production strains.

Prof. Uwe Sauer, ETH Zürich (Switzerland)

Prof. Sauer is a leading researcher in microbial systems biology. The overarching theme of his research is understanding the coordination of cellular networks, metabolism and regulation in particular. He is one of the leaders to develop high-​throughput technology and conceptually new approaches towards a most sophisticated knowledge base. The speciality of his interdisciplinary team of biologists, engineers, and computer scientists are high-​throughput experimental technologies for quantitative metabolomics, ¹³C-​based intracellular flux analysis, and dynamic GFP analysis in mini-​scale cultivations. Different types of mathematical models are then used to quantitatively relate metabolomics, expression and proteomics data to the functional network output in terms of fluxes. Prof. Sauer has published over 200 research papers.

Prof. Roel Bovenberg, DSM (The Netherlands)

Prof. Bovenberg is a most successful industrial researcher. He is working as Corporate Scientist Biotechnology in a globally active biotech company DSM on natural product discovery programs, yeast strains and enzymes that can convert agricultural residues into bioethanol and various microbial cell factory programs for more sustainable production of enzymes, biochemicals and natural products, such as antibiotics. Another aspect is the development of both traditional evolution and bioinformatics methods for fast screening and safe engineering of desired microbial cell factories. In addition to his work at DMS, he holds a position at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, where he focusses on new cell engineering methods for filamentous fungi, to accelerate the discovery of natural products for – among other things – new antibiotics.