Dr Birgitta E. Ebert
Birgitta specializes in improving microbial catalysts for eco-friendly chemical and material production by leveraging metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, systems analysis, and modeling.
Her research focuses on developing biotechnology concepts to address critical challenges such as pollution, climate change and overexploitation of natural resources. Her goal is to create microbial cell factories that convert renewable resources and waste into valuable products, reducing reliance on petrochemicals. She collaborates closely with chemists and chemical engineers to enhance the integration of chemical and biological processes for improved efficiency and sustainability.
Birgitta has a background in Chemical Engineering and a PhD in Systems Biotechnology from TU Dortmund University (Germany). She led a research group in Systems Metabolic Engineering at the Institute of Applied Microbiology at RWTH Aachen University (Germany) from 2012 to 2019. In 2016, she expanded her expertise in Synthetic Biology by joining the Keasling lab at the University of California in Berkeley and the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville (USA).
Since April 2019, she has been at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland, applying her expertise to engineer microbial cell factories for fermentation-based manufacturing.
Industry
Dr. Ebert has collaborated with industry on a variety of different projects. Previous industry partneres include: Cargill Deutschlang GmbH, Suedzucker AG, BRAIN AG, Organobalance GmbH (today Novozymes A/S) , B&S ANalytics (today B. Braun Melsungen AG), Lead Discovery Center GmbH.
Collaborations
Dr. Ebert has worked and led several collborative research projects with (inter)national researchers, including Prof. Jochen Foerster (DTU Denmark, now Carlsberg A/S, DK), Prof. Jay D. Keasling (UC Berkeley, USA), Prof Vassily Hatzimanikatis (EPFL, CH), Prof. Christine Lang (Organobalance GmbH, DE)
Key Publications
Alter T, Ebert BE*, Determination of growth-coupling strategies and their underlying principles, BMC Bioinformatics, 2019, 20(1)
Ebert BE*, Czarnotta E, Blank LM. Physiologic and metabolic characterization of squalene overproducing S. cerevisiae. FEMS Yeast Res. 2018, 18(8): foy077.
Czarnotta E, Dianat M, Korf M., Granica F, Merz J, Maury J, Ballal Jacobsen SA, Forster J, Ebert BE*, Blank LM. Fermentation and purification strategies for the production of betulinic acid and its lupane-type precursors in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Biotechnol Bioeng 2017;114: 2528-38.
Ebert BE, Kurth F, Grund M et al. Response of Pseudomonas putida KT2440 to increased NADH and ATP demand. Appl Environ Microbiol 2011;77: 6597-6605.
Blank LM, Ionidis G, Ebert BE et al. Metabolic response of Pseudomonas putida during redox biocatalysis in the presence of a second octanol phase. FEBS J 2008;275: 5173-5190.