Ioannis earned his PhD (cum laude/with honors) in 2019 from Wageningen University (the Netherlands) in genetic and metabolic engineering of thermophilic and mesophilic bacteria. During his PhD project he focused on the characterization of a thermotolerant Cas9 orthologue (ThermoCas9) and the development of the first Cas9-based genome engineering tool for thermophilic bacteria. Moreover, he worked on the adaptation of CRISPR-Cas and antiCRISPR systems as genetic engineering tools for non-model mesophilic and thermophilic bacteria. He further employed these tools for engineering the metabolism of non-model bacteria towards the production of green chemicals and biosensors, as well as to gain physiological insight.
Ioannis is currently continuing his work as a post-doctoral fellow in Prof. John van der Oost’s group at the Microbiology department of Wageningen University. He focuses on the characterization of novel CRISPR-Cas systems and their adaptation as genome engineering tools for bacteria and eukaryotes, aiming to develop genome engineering systems with improved efficiencies and specificities.