Marta Papini, MSc Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Kemivägen 10, SE-412 96 Göteborg, Sweden Phone: +46(0)31 772 3876 Fax: +46(0)31 772 3801 E-mail: papini [at] chalmers.se Office: Room 6112B     Education and degrees 2006 M.Sc. in Industrial Biotechnology, Dept. of Biotechnology and Biosciences, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy Employments 2007-2008 PhD student, Understanding and optimization of heterologous protein production through advanced on-line measurements and modeling, Center for Microbial Biotechnology, DTU- Novo Nordisk AS, Denmark 2008- PhD student, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Chalmers Publications Publications 2006 Branduardi P., Pagani R., Papini M., Porro D., “L-Ascorbic Acid Production from D-Glucose in Metabolic Engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae and its effects on strain robustness” Poster presented at ISSY 25 SYSTEMS BIOLOGY OF YEASTS June 2006 Nanasaari Espoo, Finland. 2007 Papini M., Van den Berg F., Leuenhagen C., Eliasson-Lantz A. and Olsson L. “Monitoring of heterologous protein production in yeast using on-line measurements and modelling” Poster presented at the ECB13, Barcelona, Spain, September 2007.   Papini M., Van den Berg F., Leuenhagen C., Eliasson-Lantz A. and Olsson L. “Modelling yeast fermantation processes using combined sensors data”, Poster presented at RAFTVII, St. Pete Beach, FL, USA, November 2007 2008 Papini M. and Nielsen J. “3-Hydroxypropionic acid production through metabolically engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae” Poster presented at 1st Nordforsk Metting, Copenhagen, June 2008 Book Chapters 2009 Papini M*, Salazar M* and Nielsen J “Systems Biology of Industrial Microorganisms” in Advances in  Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology volume in Biosystmes Engineering (* equal contribution), in publication Grants, Awards and Prizes 2009 Chalmers Forskningsfonden   FEBS Young Travel Fundings Personal text My main interest is metabolic engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae for production of different classes of industrially relevant compounds; more specifically I am particularly interested in the engineering of yeast carbon central metabolism and redox metabolism. I am working on a PhD project aiming at producing 3-Hydroxypropionic acid (3-HPA, important building block for manufacturing of plastics and acrylates, recently identified by the US Department of Energy among the top 10) through metabolic engineering.  3-HPA is not endogenously produced by yeast and my project has the double target of increasing the endogenous levels of glycerol and to reconstruct a pathway leading from glycerol to 3-HPA.   Throughout my work I am using genome-scale metabolic model of yeast to evaluate and critically revise the planned metabolic engineering strategies. Furthermore, to characterize the mutants that I design and create I use different genome-wide techniques. I have a Master Degree in Industrial Biotechnology which means that my background is similar to that of a microbiologist. My original research skills where mainly in the fields of molecular biology since I have done a lot of strain engineering during my very long Master thesis in Milan, Italy. When I moved to Denmark to start my PhD project I get acquainted with chemical engineers (who saw my yeast from a different perspective) and bioinformatic-computer people (which I found out to be nicer in persons, compared to the grey-nerd  image I had of them in my mind).  This meeting broaden tremendously my skills and opened new  horizons, allowing me to learn to run fermentation as a proper chemical engineer would and, despite of my poor knowledge in maths, to start using computer for modelling purposes, initially through chemometric analysis (during my work at DTU) and now through stoichiometric modelling here at Chalmers. I do hope to keep on learning a lot from everybody working with me and meet people with very different backgrounds and point of views on the same topic since those are, in my opinion, the keys of success of such an heterogeneous group as the great one I am working in now: Nielsen’s lab for Systems Biology.