Enrico Orsi Post Doctoral Researcher 
Promoting new-to-industry bacteria to the level of cell factories. I combine metabolic engineering with synthetic biology for designing new CO2-based biorefineries.
About Me
Born and raised in Bologna (Italy), in 2013 I obtained my BSc in Biotechnology at the University of my city. For my BSc thesis I moved to Barcelona (Spain), hosted at the Institute of Research in Biomedicine. Thanks to this exciting experience, I embraced the expat’s life and moved to the Netherlands for my MSc in Biotechnology at Wageningen University. Here, I developed my interest for the bio-based economy. After a short staying as visiting scholar at the University of California in San Diego (USA) in 2015, I returned to Wageningen for my PhD studies in the Bioprocess Engineering (BPE) group in 2016. From the experience in the USA at the Prof. Golden’s lab (research focus on cyanobacteria), I developed an interest towards studying and engineering the metabolism of new-to-industry microorganisms for biotechnological exploitation. At BPE, I worked on the metabolic engineering of Rhodobacter sphaeroides for advancing its status as cell factory to produce isoprenoids. Curious to know more about how to study and engineer autotrophic metabolism, in 2020 I moved for my postdoc to the group of Dr. Arren Bar-Even at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam (MPIMP, Germany). At the MPIMP, I worked on engineering Cupriavidus necator to produce chemicals via the newly engineered reductive glycine pathway. Thanks to the experience in the Bar-Even group, I combined my interest for metabolic engineering of nontraditional bacteria, bio-based production and CO2 fixation. Ultimately, these allowed me to move to SEM in 2022, and continue my research supported by two post-doctoral fellowships: the Industrial Biotechnology postdoctoral fellowship from the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action postdoctoral fellowship from the European Union.