Cornelia U. Welte is a Professor in Microbial Physiology at Radboud University, The Netherlands. Her expertise is microbial physiology and environmental microbiology. She holds a PhD degree from Bonn University, Germany, in 2011, and started on a tenure track as Assistant Professor at Radboud University in 2015. She was promoted to Full Professor in 2024.

Prof. Welte’s primary research interest is in microbial metabolism, particularly on microorganisms involved in the methane cycle, such as methanogenic and methanotrophic archaea.

Prof. Welte’s research group has been extensively studying the microbial physiology and community interactions of anaerobic methanotrophic archaea, with a focus on cultivating slow growing and fastidious environmental microorganisms. Together with her research team, she has elucidated novel anaerobic metabolic pathways by cultivation-dependent (e.g., continuous bioreactor cultures) and cultivation-independent (e.g., metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metabolomics) techniques. Ongoing research includes the cultivation of the elusive anaerobic methanotrophic archaea on electrodes to learn more about their extracellular electron transport pathways.