Arun Rajkumar Email & Phone Number

Cork, Ie

Fermoy, County Cork, Ireland

I develop microbial hosts and processes to valorise plant waste streams into products suitable for food applications.

Cork, Ireland

Development of yeast cell factories and synthetic biology tools as part of the EU yeast biotechnology project CHASSY (http://chassy.eu) with the non-conventional yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus. I created a set of cloning vectors (low- and high-copy number episomal and integrative) for K. marxianus using common metabolic and antibiotic markers, now available at Addgene.I successfully constructed yeast cell factories that can de novo produce the aroma compound 2-phenylethanol from glucose and mineral salts. The core engineering was robust enough to produce the same compound from the lactose present in dairy waste as a substrate with minimal modifications.I transferred biosensors designed for S. cerevisiae to K. marxianus as well as developing a novel phenylalanine biosensor in the latter yeast.I helped develop and write SOPs for genome engineering and vector construction used withing CHASSY and the research group at UCC.

Horsholm, Denmark

Design and characterization of yeast promoters for industrial fermentations, and their implementation in cell factories.

Lausanne Area, Switzerland

Used synthetic biology to map out the input-output function of the PHO5 promoter in Saccharomyces cerevisae.

Au-Kbc Research Centre, Madras Institute Of Technology

Studied the cell and membrane biophysics of primary and cultured cell lines using optical tweezers. Was also responsible for the maintenance of the optical tweezers apparatus.

Qqi Level 6 Project Management, Project Management, Distinction

Ph.D, Molecular Biology, Synthetic Biology, Molecular Genetics

Published my Ph.D thesis "Systematic Analysis of Yeast Gene Expression by Synthetic Promoter Libraries" in 2013.

M.S. (By Research), Biophysics

Bachelor Of Technology (B.Tech.), Industrial Biotechnology