Chair of Fermentation Engineering | Bielefeld University

Staff Members

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Erwin Flaschel

Tel +49 (0)5 21 - 106-5301 (office)
Fax +49 (0)5 21 - 106-6475 (secretary)

Email: efl@fermtech.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de

Career progression

1968 - 1973	Studies of chemistry at the Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina at Braunschweig, Germany
1973 - 1976	Doctoral thesis at the Institute of Technical Chemistry at the Technical University Hanover, Germany (Prof. Dr. K. Schügerl) with a project "Continuous reaction engineering with soluble enzymes"
1977 - 1990	Assistant at the Institute of Chemical Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Switzerland, with Prof. Dr. A. Renken. Installation of a research group on biotechnology focussing on biocatalysis and enzyme engineering. Appointment as lecturer (1978), senior assistant (1979) and as a scientific adjunct (1987)
1984 - 1990	Secretary of the Working Party on Biocatalysis of the European Federation of Biotechnology. Delegate of Switzerland (since 1987)
1990	Accepted a call for the Chair of Fermentation Engineering at the Faculty of Technology at Bielefeld University, Germany. Establishment of research focussing on topics related to engineering of microbial cultivation, downstream processing of recombinant proteins and plasmid DNA as well as on biocatalysis and enzyme engineering
1992 - 1993	Dean of the Faculty of Technology at Bielefeld University, Bielefeld
2000	Appointment as a member of the DECHEMA Working Party on Techniques of Biological Processes
2003 - 2009	Chairman of the Working Party on Techniques of Biological Processes, now renamed as Working Party on Bioprocess Engineering
2004 - 2005	Chairman of the Dechema Working Party on White Biotechnology
2005 - 2007 since 2009	Member of the board of the biotechnology section of DECHEMA
Miscella- neous	Member of the editorial board of Engineering in Life Sciences and Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering
General items	Member of DECHEMA, GDCh, ACS, AAAS etc.

Actual Research Areas

Fermentation engineering of microbial processes for the production of recombinant proteins, plasmid DNA and oligosaccharides
Genetic engineering for improvement of downstream processing of proteins
Enzyme engineering, biocatalysis and reactor design
Recycling of microbial biomass
Process monitoring by means of in situ microscopy combined with pattern recognition

Teaching

Precise information of courses given by Prof. Flaschel may be found here and in the eKVV.