2020 News and Events
October
- October 19 - Moving to Step II of UMs Sunrise plan - 75% effort in the lab - getting more done while social distancing in plastic separated lab bays. Good that we have 2 large labs to spread out in.
- Hiring freeze still in place
September
- Fall semester has started and we are still in Phase I of the UMs Sunrise plan - 50% occupancy of the lab, trying to be productive while wet lab work is currently significantly impacted....
- University-wide hiring freeze is also still in place
July & August
- Claudia has participated and presented at two DoD virtual workshops on "Scope and strategy for Army Collaborative Center for Biological Engineering" & "Biological Control Mechanisms for Materials" - matching our labs interests in the design of next generation biomaterials using approaches of synthetic biology.
May
- May 15 - Sunrise Plan for slow opening of research labs implemented - first 25% of the lab can only work on site, starting in June 50% can work on site (Phase I)
- Lab is practicing social distancing, plastic sheets separate benches to keep everyone 6 ft away, arrows to remind everyone of traffic flow.....
April
- Everyone is staying at home and trying to keep busy...
- GRC conference in Biocatalysis were Claudia was supposed to chair a session cancelled due to COVID-19
March
- March 13 - Lab is shut and goes into hibernation mode due to COVID-19 stay-at-home order
- MECP conference on multistep-enzyme catalyzed processes in Aachen (Germany) were Claudia was invited to speak, cancelled due to COVID-19 and postponed to September 2021
- Claudia traveled to Norway (UiO and NBMU) during the first week of March for the Norwegian Centennial Chair Program kick-off meeting
January
- Happy New Year 2020!
- Min-Ju Seo joined the lab as postdoctoral fellow to work on the design of new biocatalytic materials and systems.
- Claudia hosted a German Feuerzangenbowle for the lab.
2019 News and Events
October
- Claudia gave a keynote lecture at the Synthetic Biology Australasia conference in Brisbane, Australia on "Bioinspired Materials"
September
- The Schmidt-Dannert lab drove to Madison Wisconsin to attend the Central US Synthetic Biology Workshop 2019 hosted by Brian Pfleger and Vatsan Raman at UW Madison. Everyone presented their research as posters.
August
- Claudia gave a lecture at the Terpnet meeting on "Exploring the sesquiterpenoid biosynthetic space in Basidiomycota"
- Kelly Wallin and Claudia instructed a lab module on synthetic biology tools at the UMN Itasca Biological Research Station
July
- Ruijie Zhang joins the lab as postdoctoral fellow to work on strain engineering and engineering of new types of biocatalytic materials
- Claudia gave a lecture "Functional Biomaterials for Biocatalysis" at the annual SIMB meeting in Wahsington DC
- Claudia gave a key note lecture "From Biosynthesis to Functional Biomaterials" at the 2019 BioTrans meeting in Groningen, NL. https://biotrans2019.com/
- Guoqiang Zhang's and Timothy Johnston's manuscript "Developing a protein scaffolding system for rapid enzyme immobilization and optimization of enzyme functions for biocatalysis" published in ACS Synth. Biol. (https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.9b00187)
June
- Claudia, Co-PI Al Aksan and postdoc Sunyoung Kang presented research results at the DARPA Engineered Living Materials PI meeting
May
- Timothy Johnston graduated and will begin his Postbaccalaureate training at the NIH
- Azion White received MSROP and UROP fellowships to conduct summer research under the guidance of Francois
- Grayson Wawrzyn, 13' PhD Lab alum, returned to campus as invited speaker at the NIH Chemical Biology Training Grant Symposium
April
- Two new team members will be joining the lab
- Funding of a new project on engineering living materials for biocatalysis together with the Wackett and Aksan groups
March
- Sarah Bloch, '14 PhD Lab alum, was featured in a CBS Blog
- Anaya Pokhrel joins the lab as postdoctoral fellow. He will be working on strain engineering tasks.
- Research Assistant Professor Maureen Quin leaves the lab to begin a new journey in industry as Senior Development Scientist at Beckman Coulter.
- New postdoc ads have been posted - we are looking for 2-3 new postdoc for several new synthetic biology projects in the area of programmable functional protein nanomaterials
February
- Postdoc Seung-oh Seoh (SOS) starts his faculty position as Assistant Professor at the Catholic University in Seol, Korea.
- Sara Bratsch joins our team as postdoctoral fellow to work on biomaterials and strain engineering.
- Methods Enzymology Volume on Supramolecular Assemblies and Metabolons edited by Claudia and Maureen is published.
January
- "A path less taken" - the Schmidt-Dannert lab received philantropic funding for the desing of innovative, genetically programmable materials
- Postdoc Guoqiang Zhang arrives at Jiangnan University to start his new position as Associate Professor.
- Claudia's and Fernando Lopez-Gallego's review on "Advances and opportunities for the design of self-sufficient and spatially organized cell-free biocatalytic systems" in Curr. Opin. Chem. Biol. In Press.
- Chris Flynn's manuscript on the characterization of the Fusarium terpenome accepted for publication in Fungal Biology.