Project team – methane2pha project

Mateusz Łężyk, PhD

Project PI

Mateusz Łężyk received his Ph.D. at the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at Technical University of Denmark in 2014. He worked on metagenomic mining of enzyme diversity for various industrially-relevant processes. From 2015 to 2018 was a postdoc researcher at Center for BioProcess Engineering at DTU Chemical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark and now works at the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Poznan University of Technology. His research focuses on molecular characterization, optimization and control of various microbial consortia and their application in fermentative conversion of waste streams (especially C1 compounds) into value-added chemicals and energy.

Piotr Oleśkowicz-Popiel, PhD, Prof.

Natalia Gutowska, PhD

Natalia Gutowska received her PhD at the Faculty of Chemistry at Adam Mickiewicz University in 2017. She had an opportunity to work not only in an academic environment but also in industry. She is interested in analytical chemistry as well as in UV-VIS spectroscopy and recovery of valuable compounds from fermentation broth. She is engaged in a few projects in which she is focused mainly on establishing analytical methods including but not limited to use of HPLC and GC.

Sivasankar Palaniappan, PhD

PUT Assistant Professor

My principal scientific interests were in the diversity, systematics, and bioprospecting of marine actinobacterial communities. Furthermore, I am interested in capturing bacteria that are not cultivable or flourish in captivity. My long-term study goal is to uncover the microbial dark matter in inaccessible zones of terrestrial and aquatic habitats. Taxonomic classification and bioprospecting of microbial dark matter for human and environmental benefit will be the primary concern. And my current research is centered on exploiting methane gas to generate positive byproducts using methanotrophic bacteria, with a fermentative and metagenomics approach.

Aleksandra Gęsicka, MSc

PhD student

Received master’s degree in biotechnology for her work on optimization processes for the production of second-generation ethanol from raw starch with the application of thermotolerant yeast and novel amylolytic preparation in a simultaneous saccharification and fermentation process. She pursued a further academic and scientific career in the field of industrial and environmental biotechnology during her doctorate studies. In this project, her work is focused on developing the process of methane conversion to the co-polymers by mixed methanotrophic cultures.

Alumni

Hanna Prusak, BSc

Received bachelor’s degree in biotechnology at University of Life Sciences in Poznań for examining the influence of ionic liquids on quorum sensing of bacteria. Currently in her last year of industrial biotechnology studies, working on master’s thesis based on imaging flow cytometry assisted isolation of high-fat microalgae cells using cell sorter. In the project, she’s working on using fluorescent dyes to determine the content of the co-polymers in microbial cells.