报告题目：Expanding the Boundary of Biocatalysis

报 告 人： Huimin Zhao 教授 美国伊利诺伊大学（UIUC）

报告时间：2020年6月18日 周四上午9:00-10:00

报告在线地址：腾讯会议（会议ID: 244 402 912）

报告简介：

Biocatalysis has been increasingly used for practical synthesis of chemicals, fuels, and materials thanks to recent advances in synthetic biology, enzyme engineering, metabolic engineering. In this talk, I will discuss our recent effort in the development of new strategies and tools for biocatalysis including: (1) design of novel chemoenzymatic routes and repurposed enzymes for synthesis of fine chemicals by exploring the synergy between biocatalysis and chemical catalysis, and (2) development of new genome-scale engineering tools for rapid engineering of microbial cell factories for production of fuels and industrial chemicals.

报告人信息：

Dr. Huimin Zhao is the Steven L. Miller Chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and professor of chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, and bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He received his B.S. degree in Biology from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1992 and his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1998 under the guidance of Nobel Laureate Frances Arnold. Prior to joining UIUC in 2000, he was a project leader at the Industrial Biotechnology Laboratory of the Dow Chemical Company. He was promoted to full professor in 2008. Dr. Zhao has authored and co-authored over 340 research articles and over 25 issued and pending patent applications with several being licensed by industry. In addition, he has given over 390 plenary, keynote, and invited lectures. Twenty-five (25) of his former graduate students and postdocs are pursuing academic careers. Dr. Zhao received numerous research and teaching awards and honors such as ECI Enzyme Engineering Award (2019) and ACS Marvin Johnson Award (2018). His primary research interests are in the development and applications of synthetic biology tools to address society’s most daunting challenges in health, energy, and sustainability, and in the fundamental aspects of enzyme catalysis, cell metabolism, gene regulation, and cell differentiation.