With Tobias Erb, TUD Dresden University of Technology welcomes a researcher of international standing on June 27^th, 2024. As part of the Frontiers in Science Lecture Series, Erb will deliver a talk on “Breaking the Limits of Natural Photosynthesis with Synthetic Biology: Designing a New-to-Nature Software for Sustainable Carbon Capture”.
To solve the climate crisis, the recovery of CO₂ from the Earth's atmosphere is a necessary as well as scientifically and technically complex undertaking. Natural photosynthesis processes are not sufficient to adequately combat anthropogenic climate change. Against this background, Erb's lecture will discuss the limitations of biological photosynthesis and show how we can use synthetic biology to create alternatives that convert CO₂ more efficiently than those processes evolved by nature. I will present different approaches and technology futures that range from new-to-nature biocatalysts, designer organisms, to artificial chloroplasts and cells, and discuss their opportunities and risks.

Tobias Erb is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology and holds a professorship at the Philipps University of Marburg. His research combines biology and chemistry and ranges from the molecular mechanisms of carboxylases to the development of new-to-nature solutions such as synthetic CO₂ fixation pathways and artificial chloroplasts. Tobias Erb has received several awards for his research, most recently the Future Insight Prize from Merck KGaG (2022) and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation (2024). Research visits have taken him to Ohio State University, the University of Illinois and ETH Zurich. The biologist and chemist has been a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina since 2023.

The Frontiers in Science Lecture Series aims at taking up current trends and questions from the field of international cutting-edge research and conveying them to a broad, multidisciplinary audience within the university.

• The event language is English.
• Time: 6:30-8:00 p.m.
• Location: Heinz-Schönfeld Lecture Hall, Barkhausen Building (BAR I90).

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