September 19, 2023
Today in the meet the DCs series … Simon Schröder!
Hi everyone, Simon here! I am a doctoral candidate in the BiodeCCodiNNg Doctoral Network.
Now that most of us have started working on our respective projects, we want to introduce ourselves to you. Every week, one of us DCs will give you a brief overview about themselves and their first impressions of these new scientific journeys. So look forward to getting to know us all in the coming weeks!
For me, my academic adventures eventually led me from Bochum, Germany to beautiful Groningen, in the north of The Netherlands. Here, I hope not only to improve my Dutch, but also to do research in the exciting field of biotechnology. Since July, this town and its inhabitants have been so incredibly welcoming to me, even featuring a lot of non-Dutch, sunny weather, if you can believe it!
After getting ready in the morning, the typical day here begins with me biking to work. Taking the elevator up to the 9th floor of the UMCG, you can not only meet many friendly faces, but also get an amazing view of the city. Then, with my plan for the day in hand, I enter the wet-lab, where I am working on the discovery and characterization of N-N bond-forming enzymes. The novel compounds I expect to produce with these fascinating biocatalysts will surely make for some interesting pharmaceutical precursors!
To identify the really interesting members among this family of evasive enzymes, however, somebody first has to figure out how to overcome the many, many difficulties of developing a method suited for screening a very high throughput of these enzymes, variants and their substrates. And guess what – that lucky person seems to be me.
After work, I often like to bike to one of the pools here in Groningen to go swimming, which helps me both relax and to get new ideas (though on more days than I like to admit, I achieve the same results without exercising…).
I can’t wait until we start to connect within this network, having discussions, exchanging research and bringing all the projects to heights we can only reach as a team. Go, BiodeCCodiNNg!
#BiodeCCodiNNgDN #msca #horizoneurope #NNenzymes #groningen
