Episode 5

Featuring Prof. Dr. Tobias Erb, Microbiologist and winner of the Future Insight Prize 2023

In this episode we get curious about Co2 and unravel how we can take a plant’s natural process of photosynthesis and enhance the pathways to create a more efficient and effective carbon capture model. Discovering how that can then be made into fuel will be announced at the Curious Future Insight Conference in 2024. Joining me for this conversation virtually from Europe is Prof. Dr. Tobias J Erb, Director of the department of Biochemistry and Synthetic Metabolism at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marberg, Germany

OUR GUEST BIO:

Tobias J. Erb is synthetic biologist and Director at the Max Planck Institute for terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany. His team interfaces biology and chemistry and centers on the discovery, function and engineering of CO2-converting enzymes and pathways. Research in Erb’s lab crosses multiple scales: from the molecular mechanisms of carboxylases to their ecological relevance, and from understanding the evolution of natural CO2-fixation to developing new-to-nature solutions, such as synthetic CO2-fixation pathways and artificial chloroplasts.

Erb studied Chemistry and Biology and did his PhD in 2009 at the University of Freiburg (D) and the Ohio State University (US). After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Illinois (US), he headed a junior research group at ETH Zürich (CH) from 2011 to 2014, 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 (SGM and VAAM), the Otto Bayer Award (2018) the Prix Forcheur (2021), and the Future Insight Award 2023. 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. He is elected member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2023 and received the Leibniz-Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 2024.

HELPFUL LINKS:

www.instagram.com/becurious_podcast

Max Planck Institute

https://www.mpi-marburg.mpg.de/erb

Department Erb: https://www.mpi-marburg.mpg.de/biochemistry-and-synthetic-metabolism

Erb lab:

https://www.mpi-marburg.mpg.de/erb

Curious Future Insight Conference

www.curiousfutureinsight.org

Science Declaration

www.make-science-not-war.org

CREDITS:

The BE CURIOUS PODCAST is brought to you by ECODA MEDIA

Host: Louise Houghton

Production by: Deviants Media

Producer: Louise Houghton

Assistant Producer: Marta Wagner

Assistant Producer: Ralph Cortez

Motion Graphics: Josh Dage