Clemens Mayer receives a NWO M grant

Clemens Mayer has been awarded a NWO Open Competition Domain Science - M grant worth EUR 350,000. He receives the grant for the project ‘Making bacteria love plastic’.

Each year an ever-growing amount of plastic waste is accumulated and released into the environment, where (micro)plastics are threatening ecosystems and human health. New ways for the efficient and sustainable degradation of plastics, such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), are therefore in high demand. Here, Clemens and his group will apply a cutting-edge enzyme engineering platform to create biocatalysts that are fit-for-use for PET depolymerization. Toward this end, the activity of these enzymes will be linked to the survival of producing microorganisms, thereby allowing for the identification of better catalysts according to Darwin’s survival of the fittest principle.

In the NWO Open Competition Domain Science - M, researchers can apply individually or in collaboration for non-programmed, curiosity-driven research. This funding instrument is open for proposals with a research question in or overlapping the fields of earth sciences, astronomy, chemistry, computer science, life sciences, physics and mathematics.