Rate My Professor Lennart Schada von Borzyskowski

Lennart Schada von Borzyskowski is an Assistant Professor in the Microbial Sciences Cluster at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), Leiden University. He earned his undergraduate degree in Applied Natural Science from the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg in Germany. He completed his PhD in biochemistry and metabolic engineering from ETH Zürich, Switzerland, between 2012 and 2016, under the supervision of Tobias Erb and Julia Vorholt. His doctoral work centered on designing and implementing synthetic metabolic pathways in engineered bacteria for carbon dioxide capture. Subsequently, he undertook a 12-month research visit at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, USA, elucidating the structure of a protein complex implicated in carcinogenesis. From 2016 to 2021, he served as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany. During this period, he characterized the β-hydroxyaspartate cycle (BHAC), a novel metabolic pathway facilitating trophic interactions between algae and bacteria in oceans worldwide. He also applied BHAC enzymes to enhance bacterial and plant metabolism for biotechnological purposes, including plastic degradation and improved crop yields.