Dr. Ir. Mark (M.M.M.) Bisschops obtained his PhD degree (2016) in industrial microbiology at Delft University of Technology. During his PhD, he explored the molecular responses and quantitative physiology of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to (near-) zero growth rates. This and the subsequent projects granted him a strong background in quantitative physiology and in combining bioreactor cultivations with state-of-the-art molecular and cell biology analyses. At Chalmers University of Technology, he studied the impact of heterologous protein production on the physiology and cell biology of yeast in the Systems and Synthetic Biology division. Besides industrially relevant proteins such as amylase, this also entailed amyloid Beta-peptides which are involved in Alzheimer’s Disease. To further build his expertise in synthetic and molecular biology, he returned to Delft and focussed on the links between the yeast cell cycle, growth and nutritional status, while learning the latest CRISPR/Cas based techniques. In the meanwhile, he sought a way to combine the experience with amyloid beta with his core expertise, the physiology and molecular responses of non-dividing, but non-starved cells. This culminated in a granted VENI-project in 2017 to use aging yeast cells to study the links between cellular energetics and neurodegenerative diseases. On October 1st 2020, Mark joined the Bioprocess Engineering group at the WUR as tenure-track assistant professor and directs his research towards uncoupling growth from product formation, with emphasis on metabolic energetics and maintenance energy requirements, in microbial biotechnology.

Bioprocess Engineering

Microbial Biotechnology