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Amelia-Elena Rotaru

I am an assistant professor of Microbial Biochemistry and Physiology at the University of Southern Denmark. I received my Ph.D. in 2009 from the Max Plank Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany. After graduation, I took two postdoctoral positions, in 2009 at iNANO Aarhus University and in 2010 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I returned to Denmark in 2013 with a fellowship from the Danish Research Council (DFF). Next, I established a research group at the University of Southern Denmark after being awarded a highly competitive DFF national grant (Sapere Aude) in 2015, along with a couple other grants (from Novo Nordisk and Innovationsfond).

Over the past eight years, the overarching research theme in my lab has been the physiology of electroactive microorganisms. We are primarily investigating electroactive microorganisms with potential for biotechnological applications. Some examples are microorganisms involved in interspecies interactions during anaerobic digestion, microorganisms influencing biodeterioration of materials, or with the ability to sustainably produce multi-carbon chemicals.