Frank’s academic journey began with a PhD in bioprocess scale-up/down, where he developed stochastic models to predict the microenvironment encountered by cells in large-scale bioreactors.
Following his PhD, he conducted postdoctoral research at INSA Toulouse in France, focusing on the characterisation of cell population dynamics and diversification (phenotypic and genotypic).
Recently, this research led to the discovery of the Fitness–Entropy compensation rule, a fundamental principle that can be applied to various cellular systems to predict the mechanisms and intensity of phenotypic diversification, as well as its impact on cellular entropy.
Frank’s research expertise is complemented by his teaching responsibilities, which include courses on mathematical modeling of dynamic systems, systems and synthetic biology, bioprocess engineering, and more applied topics such as project-based courses on the production of valuable compounds by microbes, bioreactor operations in the lab and single-cell analyses.
Microbial fermentation has been used for years in the food industry to produce ingredients such as enzymes and in the biopharma industry. The transformative capability of microbial fermentation is deeply rooted in human history, with evidence showing humans have been leveraging fermentation for more than 5000 years. Will fermentation, the oldest food processing technique, power the future of the food industry?
