Biofuels and Bioenergy

Herman Pel studied Biology at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. In 1992 he completed his PhD on biogenesis of mitochondria of the baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae at the University of Amsterdam. He received a long-term EMBO fellowship to continue his work on mitochondrial genetics at the Institut Genetique Moleculaire at the University of Paris-South, Orsay, France. In 1995 he became Research Fellow at the department of Biochemistry of the University of  Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, where he worked on bacterial and mitochondrial protein synthesis. In 1998 he joined DSM where he currently holds a position as Principal Scientist microbial strain development at the DSM Biotechnology Center (DBC) in Delft. Within DSM he has been involved in the development of numerous enzyme and metabolite production processes. At present he is scientific leader of DSM’s enzymes for biofuels R&D program..