Modern Biotechnology in a Changing World: Health, Environment and Regulation

BVL online symposium from 6 to 7 October 2021

Tobias Erb

Tobias Erb

Tobias J. Erb is a synthetic biologist and Director at the Max Planck Institute for terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany. Erb studied Chemistry and Biology at the University of Freiburg (D) and the Ohio State University (US). After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Illinois (US), Tobi Erb headed a junior research group at ETH Zürich (CH), before he relocated to the Max Planck Institute in Marburg, where he was promoted to Director in 2017.

Erb received numerous awards, among them the Research Awards of the Swiss and the German Societies for Microbiology, the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize of the German Research Foundation and the Otto Bayer Award. He was named one of 12 up- and coming scientists by American Chemical Society's C&EN in 2015 and elected to the European Academy of Microbiology in 2019 and EMBO in 2021. Tobi Erb serves as expert on the working groups "Artificial Photosynthesis" and "Life Sciences" at the German National Academy of Sciences as well as on the "5th Gene technology report".

Research in the lab of Tobi Erb centers on the discovery, function and engineering of novel CO2 converting enzymes and their use in engineered and artificial photosynthesis, as well as the bottom-up design of synthetic chloroplasts and cells.