User at a Glance: Dr. Michael Maurer

DASGIP claims itself to know the users of the DASGIP products and their specific requirements for various applications very well. Here, DASGIP team would like to introduce to some of our valued customers – or rather: let them introduce themselves by answering five questions – about themselves, their employer and current challenges for the market they work for.

Dr. Michael Maurer, lector and scientist at the University of Applied Sciences Vienna

What three words would your colleagues use to describe you?
I guess they would say I am an optimistic and innovative person who used to act in a diplomatic way.

Where and how did you spend your last vacation?

In company with my partner I was on a three week backpacker trip trough Finland, Estonia and St. Petersburg. It was a fascinating trip, full of various impressions. We started in Finland, a natural paradise with dreamlike landscapes, lakes and forests. St. Petersburg was a contrast. There we enjoyed the sights and cultural life before we leaped into the Middle Ages by exploring the old town of Tallinn. During the final tour around Estonia we got known the country as an ambitious EU Member State with a beautiful nature.

What do you especially like about your job?

I am lector and scientist in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Applied Sciences, FH Campus, in Vienna. Our educational program as well as the applied research is carried out in cooperation with the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. Thus, I fill in two areas of responsibility. First of all I give our students theoretically and practically understanding of bioprocess technology. On the other hand I supervise parts of our research projects. Within our research cooperation we are optimizing microbial strains for the production of recombinant proteins. In the field of white biotechnology we are working on an increased production of low-molecular organic substances. Additionally, we are interested in the production processes themselves, that’s why we also focus monitoring and optimization. For me, the particular challenge and the specific attraction of my work is the chance to directly influence the educational program with newest scientific findings.

How did you come to know DASGIP?
The first time I got in contact with DASGIP was at the Biotechnica exhibition in Hanover when we were looking for bioreactors running with smallest working volumes. After a counselling interview and a live demofermentation in the laboratory of one of our cooperation partners we were immediately convinced by the parallel bioreactor systems. Meanwhile we have extended our system to eight parallel reactors as well as two 4L bioreactors for process development.
In your opinion, what is the most exciting challenge at the moment?
In our research we are using a sytems biotechnological approach. To facilitate our “OMICS” analyses such as transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, we need reproducible cultivation results. The biggest challenge is the implementation of generated data into models, which may be used as prediction tool for strain and process optimization.
Dr. Michael Maurer was interviewed by DASGIP on 13 March, 2011.
Michael Maurer
Further Interviews
Dr. Julia K. Schmidt, BASF
Dr. Manuel Quiros, ICVV
Dr. Fadhel Ben Chaabane, IFP
Dr. Matthew L. Lipscomb, OPXBIO