Liliana Calzadiaz Ramirez is a PhD Candidate at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology. Liliana currently studies enzyme engineering, and visited KAUST after being invited by the SSB lab as a speaker to deliver a talk titled "Testing, Screening and Evolving NADPH-regenerating enzymes with an E. coli NADPH-sensor strain."

Prof. Lauersen today had the chance to deliver a talk at a conference in Singapore on the topic of "Future Trends in Synthetic Biology: Asian Perspectives." His talk was titled "Transforming Algae into a Sustainable Production Platform," and represented the Saudi Arabian and Persian Gulf potential for joining the Synthetic Biology revolution.

Dr. Julian Wichmann is a Post-Doctoral Fellow, and was Prof. Lauersen's previous PhD student, at Bielefeld University. He visited KAUST after being invited by the SSB lab as a speaker to deliver a talk titled "Development of high-throughput process to optimise microbes for biofertilizer applications."Learning by building: Engineering light-driven green cell factories for the sustainable production of hydrocarbon chemicals enables understanding of metabolic architectures in eukaryotic algae".

Zeenat Rupawalla is a PhD Candidate in Professor Ben Hankamer's group in Australia. She and Prof. Lauersen met when they were working with Dr. Hankamer at the same time. Zeenat visited KAUST after being invited by the SSB lab as a speaker to deliver a talk titled "Development of high-throughput process to optimise microbes for biofertilizer applications."

In October, Prof. Lauersen had a chance to visit Dr. Claudia Vickers's team from Australia in Singapore, and then visited Australia directly, to learn more about the future of Synthetic Biology.

Prof. Lauersen had the absolute privilege of delivering The Red Sea Research Center's Open Science Conference Keynote Lecture, titled "Keynote Lecture: Exploring the potential of algae as a sustainable biotechnological production platform" today!

Today, Prof. Lauersen had an opportunity to speak at NEOM to help the planners and organizers imagine a biology-inclusive design with his talk titled "Sustainability, Synethic Biology, and Applied Biotechnology: A Vision for NEOM." Only good things can come from collaborations between people working towards a progressive and wild future.

Prof. Lauersen recently had the pleasure of speaking to a select few Post-Doctoral Fellows at NYUAD about his career trajectory and making the next jump in their academic careers. The food was plenty!

Prof. Lauersen had the absolute privilege of speaking about Algal medical applications, including wound healing and improving food quality, at the CBRC Digital Wellbeing conference today.

Dr. Dennis Dienst received his PhD from Humboldt University of Berlin, and is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Uppsula University studying high density cultivation methods for microalgae. Dennis visited KAUST after being invited by the SSB lab as a speaker to deliver a talk titled "Towards improved microbial chassis for the photosynthetic production of terpenoids."

Dr. Boas Pucker just completed his PhD from Bielefeld University. He visited KAUST after being invited by the SSB lab as a speaker to deliver a talk titled "Computational approaches to study plant genomics and evolution."

Prof. Lauersen had the absolute privilege of speaking on a panel along with Prof. Mani Sarathy and Dr. Thomas Finkbeiner. The panel was part of KAUST's Sci-Café initiative and the topic was 'Circular Carbon Economy.'

On the latest “Young PIs” interview series, Konstantinos Vavitsas from EUSynBioS interviewed Prof. Lauersen based on his recent appointment as an Assistant Professor. Even though Konstantinos and Prof. Lauersen have published a paper together, it was their first chance to discuss science, algae, and the future at large together.