Biosketch

Prof. Dick Janssen studied chemistry in Nijmegen, graduated in microbiology (in 1982), and after post-doctoral work in biodegradation he became interested in enzyme discovery and engineering. He investigated the microbial metabolism of xenobiotic compounds, discovered various new enzymes catalyzing carbon-halogen bond cleavage, and solved mechanistic and kinetic problems in such enzymes. Since 2000, his group at GBB became more involved in research on enzymes that have potential applications in industrial biocatalysis. Structure-inspired protein engineering and bioinformatics-based discovery led to improved and new enzymes, with remarkable possibilities in enantioselective catalysis and green chemistry, e.g., in the sustainable synthesis of antibiotics. Since 2010, the work focused on integration of computational methods, including computational enzyme design and high-throughput docking and molecular dynamics simulations, into protein engineering strategies. Example contributions concentrated on:

• Exploration of diverse dehalogenases, providing the foundations for many mechanistic, environmental and industrial discoveries on a fascinating group of enzymes;

• Improving synthesis/hydrolysis ratios of coupling enzymes for use in chemoenzymatic antibiotic and peptide synthesis;

• Demonstration of new reactions of industrial interest, incl. those catalyzed by halohydrin dehalogenases, aminomutases and ammonia lyases;

• FRESCO and CASCO workflows for enzyme thermostability and selectivity engineering through computation.

Dick Janssen retired medio 2020. He has published >350 peer-reviewed papers that have received close to 25,000 citations (Google Scholar); he is co-inventor on 4 patents. His achievements are well-recognized in the biocatalysis field, resulting in being awarded the BioTrans Senior Award (2019). He has supervised about 50 PhD completed studies. Under his leadership his research group acquired many millions of funding through various EU projects, NWO, PPP programs funded by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs (e.g., BE-Basic, IBOS-ACTS) and through many bilateral contracts with companies (e.g., DSM-Firmenich, BASF, Enzypep).