Welcome Carlos Alberto Chaves Girao Neto, our latest sandwich doctoral candidate from Brazil

Today, Carlos Girao, a doctoral researcher in Chemical Engineering supervised by Prof. Dr. Maria Valderez Ponte Rocha from the Chemical Engineering Department of the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil, has joined our group for a six months sandwich research stay. He is financially supported by a fellowship from CAPES, one of the Brazilian research funding agencies, equivalent to German Academic Research Council DAAD. Carlos had been recommended to us by Prof. Dr. Talita Honorato, a former sandwich doctoral student in our group who after a post-doctoral stay at University of Ceará where she met and befriended Prof. Valderez, became professor at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia in Brazil. Carlos’ doctoral project involves the development and use of immobilized enzymes for the biotechnological conversion and valorisation of biomaterials. In one of his projects, he immobilised a lipase on lignin supports extracted from cashew apple bagasse, an abundant by-product of Brazilian agriculture, combined with magnetite. He has successfully used these biocatalysts in the production of terpenic esters using terpenic alcohols extracted from some essential oils. This should render the bioactive, hydrophobic compounds more soluble and, potentially, increase their antimicrobial activities – but it might as well decrease these activities. This is why Carlos has brought these novel compounds to quantitatively test their antibacterial and antifungal activities, supervised by our post-doctoral researcher Dr. Carolin Richter and using the bioassays which she and her students have optimized. In turn, we hope to profit from Carlos’ experience in enzyme immobilisation which we think could well improve our own biotechnological valorisation of chitosans. Thus, we are looking forward to a win-win situation!