Speaker: Prof. Jay Keasling (University of California, Berkeley.)

Title: Synthetic Biology for Synthetic Chemistry 

Time: 10:00 am, October 25, 2017

Place: Room B301, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Science (TIB, CAS)

Biography of the speaker:

Prof. Kondo got his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, Kyoto University in 1988. He started his academic career at Department of Applied Chemistry, Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan as an associate professor. Then he moved Kobe University in 1995 and he was full professor in 2003. In 2007,　Kobe University established Biorefinery Center headed by A. Kondo as a director, and he is also leading the Biomass Engineering Program at RIKEN as a team leader from 2012. He has become a member of Science Council Japan.

Prof. Kondo developed several biomass pretreatment technologies, cell surface display systems for yeast, bacteria and fungus, metabolic pathway design methods, metabolic analysis technologies, microbial cell factories for production of biofuels and various chemicals from biomass, cyanobacteria for production of starch, oil and chemicals from CO2. He also developed bio-nanoparticles for drug delivery and magnetic nanoparticles for bio-separation and analysis. He has been the project leader of various big research programs of Japan. Especially he launched a big 10 year project “Innovative BioProduction Kobe” as director, which is supported by Special Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology, Creation of Innovation Centers for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research Areas, MEXT, Japan. From 2010.

Prof. Kondo was appointed as editor of the Journal of Biotechnology and editorial board members of 12 journals such as Biotechnology for Biofuels, Bioresource Technology, Microbial Cell Factories, FEMS Yeast Research, Journal of Biological Engineering, Metabolic Engineering Communications, etc. He has published more than 564 peer reviewed international papers.