Dr. Nico J. Claassens is an Associate Professor at the Laboratory of Microbiology, Wageningen University, The Netherlands. A core activity of his Microbial Synthetic Metabolism group is to develop more rational ways of engineering metabolism and synthetic cells using techniques such as targeted multiplex genetic engineering, quantitative proteomics and evolutionary approaches. A lot of the research in his group focuses on designing and engineering synthetic pathways to support the efficient use of next-generation, sustainable feedstocks, including CO2, hydrogen and one-carbon-substrates, such methanol and formate. With his research he wants to contribute to the development of biotechnology to produce carbon-based products more sustainably using CO2 and green electricity as renewable feedstocks. A specific product class he is interested in, is the production of food proteins.
Nico has a broad experience in teaching, e.g. by co-coordinating the iGEM Synthetic Biology competition team and teaching in several courses at Wageningen University, such as Metabolic Engineering and Applied Molecular Microbiology. In addition, he is an organizer of the the biyearly Synthetic Biology in Action course of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). After obtaining his PhD at Wageningen University with Prof. John van der Oost in 2017, Nico worked as a Postdoc from 2017 till 2019 at the Max Planck Institute Potsdam, Germany with Dr. Arren Bar-Even, supported by a Rubicon fellowship of the Dutch Science Organization (NWO). In 2020 he became Assistant Professor at Wageningen University, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2023. In 2019 he was awarded a personal NWO-Veni grant, and in 2024 a NWO-Vidi grant (NWO) and an ERC Starting Grant from the EU to support the research in his team. Nico is associate editor at Microbial Cell Factories, and is co-founder and advisor of the Dutch Synthetic Biology organization SynBioNL, and member of the Microbial Biotechnology boards at the Royal Dutch Microbiology Association (KNVM) and Dutch Biotechnology Association (NBV).
Photo Credit - Copyright: Guy Ackermans