Jasper Koehorst

Jasper Koehorst is an Assistant Professor in Systems and Synthetic Biology at Wageningen University & Research. His research focuses on integrating computational and experimental approaches to study microbial genomics, metabolic engineering, and systems biology. He leads projects exploring genome-scale models for industrial biotechnology applications, such as syngas fermentation optimization and machine learning-based process control. His work also addresses fundamental questions in plant-microbe interactions, symbiotic relationships, and evolutionary genomics. Koehorst has contributed to initiatives like FAIR data standards for genomics and digital twin frameworks in life sciences.

Education: He holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from Wageningen University (2019), with a thesis on necrotizing fasciitis pathogenesis. His postdoctoral research expanded into systems biology and synthetic microbial consortia.

Research Interests: His group investigates microbial metabolic flexibility, computational modeling of biological systems, and applications in bioenergy and bioprocess engineering. Key areas include genome annotation pipelines, microbial community dynamics, and the development of open science resources like Wikidata integration for biological data.

Publications: His recent work spans high-impact journals like Cell and Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal, with a focus on interdisciplinary topics such as MLOps in fermentation, auxin signaling mechanisms, and genomic analyses of symbiotic microbes. Over 50 peer-reviewed articles highlight his contributions to microbial genomics and systems approaches.

Grants & Awards: While no specific awards are listed, his projects have received institutional support through Wageningen University collaborations and EU-funded initiatives. He currently co-supervises three active PhD projects on microbiome dynamics, computational modeling, and bioindustry 4.0 applications.

Labs/Teams: Koehorst is affiliated with the Systems Biology group and collaborates with the Bioinformatics & Systems Biology department at Wageningen. His team works closely with industry partners on bioprocess optimization and digital twin technologies.