معرفی
Sergey B. Zotchev is University Professor of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at the University of Vienna, Faculty of Life Sciences, where he heads the inter-disciplinary Research Platform ‘Secondary Metabolomes of Bacterial Communities’. Since 2015 he has built an internationally visible group that couples microbial genomics, metabolic engineering and synthetic biology to discover new antibiotics and other bioactive natural products, with continuous funding from the Austrian Science Fund, EU-FP7 and national innovation agencies.
Education & career:
- PhD 1985-1991 – State Scientific Center for Biotechnology NIIGenetika, Russia
- Alexander von Humboldt Post-doc 1991-1993 – University of Osnabrück, Germany
- Post-doc stays at University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) and Karolinska Institute (Sweden)
- 1996-2015 – Norwegian University of Science & Technology (NTNU), rising from Research Scientist to Professor
- 2011-2012 – Visiting Professor, Joint BioEnergy Institute, UC Berkeley
- Since 2015 – Professor of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, University of Vienna
Research focus: His group investigates Streptomyces and other actinobacteria, marine and endophytic microbes to unlock cryptic biosynthetic gene clusters, engineer antibiotic pathways, and develop new leads against resistant pathogens. Recent work expands into plant-endophyte interactions for enhanced production of plant-derived drugs such as bergenin, and into Antarctic microbiomes for novel chemistry.
Grants & projects (selected): MetaBac research platform (€4 M), multiple FWF projects on meroterpenoid and forced-evolution based natural product discovery, EU STREPSYNTH and ViennaMicin antibiotic development grants.
Teaching: He coordinates six master-level courses (Drug Discovery, Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Pharmacognosy seminars, etc.) and two doctoral training modules, annually supervising >20 MSc and PhD students.
