September 1 2009 Dr. Ing. Vítor Martins dos Santos has been appointed as Professor of Systems and Synthetic Biology within the AFSG group.
Prof. Vitor Martins dos Santos graduated in Bioprocess Engineering in 1992 at the College of Biotechnology, Oporto, Portugal and earned a PhD in Environmental Bioprocess Engineering at the Wageningen University, The Netherlands, under the supervision of Prof Hans Tramper and Renee Wijffels. Following a post-doc period at the Department of Molecular Biology of the Spanish Scientific Research Council in Granada, Spain, he moved subsequently to the Division of Microbiology of the National Centre for Biotechnology Research (GBF) (now Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, HZI) in Braunschweig, Germany. There he headed the Synthetic and Systems Biology Research Group and run several national and transnational Systems and Synthetic Biology projects focusing on the understanding and exploitation of microbial behaviour for industrially and medically relevant applications.
“We are very pleased with the appointment of Prof Vitor Martins dos Santos as a full chair in a time of recessiont’ says Dr Peter van der Elzen, Director at AFSG and continues ‘ Systems Biology is a focus area of our University and the relation between food and health can only be understood when approaching this at a systems level’.
Prof Vitor Martins dos Santos says ' Since my PhD I have had a soft spot for Wageningen University and I am very excited to return and further engage in the exciting and rapidly developing field of systems and synthetic biology in the agro-food area' .
Prof Willem de Vos says: “Prof Vitor Martins dos Santos who has an excellent track record in the area of systems and synthetic biology - we are very happy with his appointment and his wish to closely cooperate with the chair group of Microbiology”.