Optimizing a microbial platform to break down and valorize waste plastic

Speaker:  dr George DiCenzo, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada

Talk:  Optimizing a microbial platform to break down and valorize waste plastic

Time:  17.03.2023, 9:00 am

Venue:  Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology, Abrahama 58, hall 042B

Dr. George diCenzo during his BSc worked in the group of Prof. Turlough Finan, for which he got a degree in 2012 in Molecular Biology and Genetics from McMaster University in Canada. Also in Dr. Finan's group Dr. George DiCenzo completed his PhD in 2017 in Biology. Subsequently, he joined the group of Prof. Alessio Mengoni at the University of Florence (Italy) as a NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow, where he also worked closely with Prof. Marco Fondi. During this time, he also did a two months internship in the group of Peter Mergaert at a CNRS institute close to Paris in France. In 2017 Dr. DiCenzo was awarded with the Armand Frappier Outstanding Student Award from the Canadian Society of Microbiology for his PhD research on bacterial genome organization. Since 2019 he is hired as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Queen's University. He leads a research group that uses wetlab and bioinformatics methods to study diverse topics in microbiology, with a focus on the genomics and biology of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, the biodegradation of plastics, and soil microbial communities. He is a co-author of 49 research papers in prestigious journals including for instance Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or Nature Communications. Outside of the lab, Dr. DiCenzo enjoys travelling and supporting hockey teams, in his case the Toronto Maple Leafs.