As a research assistant for strain engineering at Pablo Nikel's group in the DTU Center for Biosustainability I had the unique opportunity to contribute to several projects of my supervisor Dr. Nicolas Krink. I extended my portfolio of strain engineering skills, including substantial efforts toward engineering an NADPH-generating P. putida strain. In the workflow to generate knock-out strains, I used CRISPR/Cas9 counter-selection to improve the efficiency of selecting for mutants. Further, I was responsible for the generation and curation of the golden gate collection of the SEM Lab, which will allow the rapid generation of heterologous pathways.

As a research assistant in the Bioprocess Engineering group at Wageningen University, I worked on a project that aimed at infecting the microalgae Tetraselmis striata with the genetically modified virus (TsVN-1), expressing a fluorescent protein on the capsid, and using it as a proof of concept for a sustainable virus-mediated production platform in microalgae. Very little was known about the virus and the tools needed to engineer it, which required a lot of creativity to progress in the research. All in all microalgae and the viruses infecting them hold have promising prospects for production of sustainable compounds.

I did my Master's thesis in the laboratory of Systems and Synthetic biology at Wageningen University & Research. My work focussed on developing biosafety strategies for the industrially relevant soil microorganism Pseudomonas putida.