Postdoc in Fungal enzymology and Food science - DTU Bioengineering

<p>Are you passionate about sustainability and innovation? Do you want to contribute to reshaping the human food supply chain and converting plant side-streams into appealing, high-quality food products? If so, we invite you to join the groundbreaking REFINES project as a Postdoctoral Researcher.</p> <p>In this role, you will focus on developing enzyme-based biosolutions to eliminate off-flavors in plant-based materials, transforming them into desirable food sources. The REFINES project is a unique opportunity for you to make a lasting societal impact, while also strengthening your research profile within enzyme technology, mycotechnology, robotics, and data science – a highly sought after profile in both academia and industry.</p> <p>You will join the Section for Synthetic biology at DTU Bioengineering that offers a unique open research environment that balances foundational science, multidisciplinary research, and innovation in close collaboration with leading national and international industry partners. </p> <p><strong>The REFINES project and your responsibilities </strong><br/><br/><strong>Your primary focus will be conducting research</strong> to create the foundational knowledge and develop the technologies needed to convert unutilized, protein-rich plant side-streams into valuable food products. This project specifically targets off-flavor molecules found in the high-quality protein side-streams from potato starch production—compounds that currently prevent these proteins from being used in human food. Together, we will identify and characterize these unknown off-flavor molecules and develop innovative enzyme-based solutions to eliminate them, making these valuable resources suitable for human consumption.</p> <p>You will join a dynamic and interdisciplinary team of scientists with expertise in mycology, laboratory automation (robotics), molecular biology, analytical chemistry, data science, and food science.</p> <p><strong>The REFINES project </strong>is funded by the Plant2Food (NNF) program and is a collaboration between DTU and Aarhus University (Department of Food Science, Center for Circular Bioeconomy), alongside two of Europe's largest potato starch producers, KMC (Denmark) and Avebe (Netherlands). This unique collaboration provides access to exclusive biological materials and detailed process information, allowing the consortium to develop a deep understanding of the off-flavors and pioneer new, sustainable solutions.</p> <p><strong>You will be responsible</strong> for conducting and driving the research project forward. Initially, you will collaborate with the mycology team (IBT collection) to select relevant fungi for to tests for off-flavor degrading enzymes. You will then work closely with our automation specialist team to develop efficient, robotic-assisted screening and characterization assays, which you will use to screen the selected fungal isolates for off-flavor degrading activity. To identify the off-flavor degrading enzymes and their corresponding genes, you will leverage the DTU Bioengineering Proteomics core and whole-genome sequencing. The identified fungal genes will then be expressed heterologously using DTU Bioengineering’s automated strain construction pipeline, with the goal of validating their off-flavor degrading activity. The project goal is to discovery new families of industrially relevant fungal enzymes for off-flavor degradation, beyond the traditionally explored enzyme sequence space used in the industry.</p> <p>You will also collaborate with natural product and food chemists at Aarhus University and industry partners to characterize the off-flavor profiles of various potato cultivars and discover new off-flavors.</p> <p>The project will deliver new foundational knowledge about off-flavors in plant side-streams, create a new robotic-assisted enzyme screening and characterization pipeline, expand the enzyme solution space available to industry, and ultimately enable the use of plant side-streams by removing off-flavors.</p> <p><strong>Your primary tasks will be:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Conduct laboratory-based research as described above.</li> <li>Communicate your findings through scientific papers, popular science articles, reports, and presentations at conferences.</li> <li>Supervise BSc, MSc, and PhD students.</li> <li>Ensure coordination of research activities across consortium partners.</li> <li>Contribute to the Plant2Food Open-Innovation-in-Science ecosystem that funds the project.</li> <li>Develop your research and competence profile.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Qualifications</strong><br/> As a formal qualification for this position, you must hold a PhD degree (or equivalent) in biochemistry, biology, biotechnology, or mycology.</p> <p><strong>Additionally, you must:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Have experience in laboratory-based experimental biology, focusing on biochemistry/enzymology or biotechnology/molecular biology.</li> <li>Possess a systematic and analytical