Wolfgang is the kind of boss, with a door that is always open for the members of the group. And whenever you have seen his door handle, you know that a lot of people want to speak with him. He is not only the right man for special computer problems but also for problems with synthesis or screening. Wolfgang loves sweets and chocolate, so for all the people out there, if you need something from him, bring sweets to put him into good humour. And by the way, that is the way we are doing it here.

Author unknown

Additional Information:

Performance Record at UNIGRAZonline

Mélanie is originated from Brittany in France, and grew up there as a neighbour of Asterix and his friends. Although her German and English both are perfect, you easily can tell by her penchant for good wine and magic potions that she also did not forget her French roots. After working three years as a postdoc at Georgia Tech, Mél returned to our group, where she also had done her PhD thesis. Of course she first had to pass Kurt's rigorous athletics test, including outdoor survival, kilometres over kilometres of hiking, ski-touring and biking, before she was accepted as his assistant (probably she had to use some magic potion she brought from home).

Right now Mél has her fingers in several different projects but she always has an open ear for all of us to profit from her experience in chemistry and biocatalysis. In her free time she is always active, either visiting her friends all over the world or doing/trying/training pretty every (extreme) sport there is.

At the end one advice: If you meet her randomly somewhere on the world, double-check, since chances are 50/50 you have met her twin sister.

Christoph (2011)

Academic CV

As the founder of the ElkCrew (ask him for the story with the elk), Kurt was our boss for a long time. In the meantime, he ascended to being an "elk of honor", the highest of decorations there is. He is still the most active member of our group when it comes to any form of sportive activity. No mountain is too high to be climbed by foot or conquered by mountain bike. Most of us have adopted modern times and use ski lifts, Kurt uses touring skis and scales any mountain all the way to the summit. Maybe this is due to the fact that he is kind of a freak in all fields of skiing. By the way, Norwegians called him a ski-o-holic. We are lucky that he is still around to let us benefit from his encyclopedic knowledge about (old) literature and especially younger elks like to listen to the stories he has to tell.

Author unknown

Additional Information:

Performance Record at UNIGRAZonline

After two years postdoctoral stay in the UK, Silvia returned to Graz in 2007 where she is currently working as a University Assistant in the elk crew.

Author unknown

Barbara has been a member of the elk-crew from the early days on, working mainly on the biocatalytic racemisation of alpha-hydroxycarboxylic acids. Nowadays, as she's employed only half-time, she had to cut back her research efforts, and she now devotes all her time to supervising lab courses and introducing future biologists and high school teachers to the wonderful world of organic chemistry.

Jörg (2014)

Isabel was born and raised in marvelous Madrid, where she studied Pharmacy and obtained her PhD in Chemistry with a thesis on the stereoselective formation of C-C bonds. The love for travelling is the hallmark of her CV: she went to Strasbourg for her Erasmus, spent part of her PhD in Barcelona and she even flew to one of the most remote places on the face of the earth to pursue her curriculum in biocatalysis: Greifswald. There she not only survived the everlasting greyness, but also acquired extremely valuable expertise on protein engineering.

Basically now, whatever is your problem, expression, purification, cloning or whatever else with your "pet biocatalyst" go straight to her. She is always willing to squeeze you in her calendar (she is so organized that Melvin Udall - As good as it gets, ed - looks like a beginner); moreover she is going to go into the "library mode" and start numbering all the hosts known by humans (and aliens) you can express your protein in. With amazing drawings attached. Besides helping doomed chemists struggling with the microbiological world, she accomplishes her goals. She nails projects at the same speed she finishes a book. And when you compliment her, she will humbly reply "I did not do that much". We are very glad Isabel flew a little bit more in her lifetime travel, to be part of our group and share her knowledge with us.

Simona (2019)

Tamara Reiter rejoined our group in summer 2013 after a short interlude at the TU Graz. Tamara is originally from Graz where she successfully completed the Chemie-Ingenieurschule. Since then she has been working in academic environment involved in various challenging and successful projects in the area of biocatalysis: deracemization of sec-alkohols using sulfatases, construction of bio-nanodevices for targeted drug delivery and recently the bio-carboxylation of aromatics. Every now and then she feels the need to go out into the world to explore something new. She spent one year in the States (Boston) to get the spirit of the American way of life, she already danced the hula in Hawaii and many more.

Silvia (2014)

After a one-and-a-half year postdoctoral stay in the Netherlands, Joerg has returned to where he belongs: the elk crew! And this is his story: originating from Northern Styria, he has started to study chemistry and philosophy (nope, that's not a mistake!) in 2003 at the KFU-Graz in order to become a teacher. Thank god, he discarded his initial plan and chose the scientific career instead, focusing on organic chemistry and biocatalysis, which directed him straight into the Elk Group. He has already performed his Master's and PhD theses within the group, working on enzymatic cascade reactions but also on the chemoenzymatic synthesis of designated alkaloids: several natural and non-natural products were thereby accessed via (enzymatic) oxidative C-C coupling. In his subsequent PostDoc, his already broad knowledge on cascades was further deepened, but he also gained a first insight into the small world of nanoparticles.

Kind of obviously, he has already worked on several projects and with many enzyme classes (ADHs, TAs, BBE, MAOs, etc.), thus gaining a lot of synthetic and microbiological experience. This and many more features make him a valuable and pleasant lab-colleague who is keen to share his knowledge with others! As such, you can frequently see him discussing all kinds of problems arising from the daily lab routine or giving a helping hand to somebody somewhere. And even though his current position as assistant claims a lot of his time for teaching Master's Students, he spends almost every second in the lab pushing his current project to success.

The question "how to manage all that stuff simultaneously?" may arise: simply by doing sports (e.g., hiking, climbing, tennis, and skiing), meeting friends, travelling, and reading. At the end there are only few things to say: welcome back, Joerg, good to have you here, and this was hopefully just the beginning of your scientific story.

Robert (2014)

Christoph has a long history in the group. He did his master as well as his PhD in our group and in the meantime from a Padavan he turned to be a Jedi master of ene-reductases and many other enzymes. The metaphor is not an accident, he's a fan of Star Wars, decorating his desk with all types of Lego figures. After graduation he visited industry but the wish for research led him back to the Elk-Crew in November, 2014. Nowadays he uses the Force to shed light onto photoenzymes. Beside Star Wars he's also keen on designing and building non-existing Lego structures and figures (e.g., Clock Tower of Graz) followed by making professional pics of them. By the way, he likes photoshooting as well...

Gábor (2015)

Academic CV (PDF)

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Matteo is another Italian PhD student in our group. He was born in the lovely town of Genova located in Northern Italy, where besides eating one of the world’s most delicious Pesto alla Genovese (at least in my opinion) he also spent his time on studying Chemistry. Particularly, he was focusing on the so fearful discipline of Organic Chemistry. After hearing rumours about a group in a town in Austria, which is known for using enzymes – big, biodegradable super catalysts – for implementation into Organic Synthesis, he couldn´t believe it. His curiosity finally drove him to do his Master Thesis during an Erasmus program, in the Elk group in Graz. From 2019 to 2020 on, he joined the group already as an unexperienced moose transforming Atropisomers with Alcohol Dehydrogenases. After finishing the Master Thesis, he travelled back to Italy earning his master’s degree at the University of Genova. It seemed that he was delighted by the field of biocatalysis, using enzymes as catalysts. To be honest it seems he was a little bit attached to the Elk Group and the beautiful City Graz as well, since he joined the group again in 2021 to start his PhD as a University Assistant. Now he is back, eagerly trying to nitrate everything what he gets his hands on, by the means of enzymes of course. Matteo is an enthusiastic, friendly, and very open-minded person, who is always ready for chattering around, welcoming new people and open for scientific discussions and advice. In a friendly way he will always try to explain you the difference between noodles and pasta or the proper Italian way of drinking an espresso. We can be grateful to have you again in our group Matteo. Welcome back.

Florian (2022)

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Lilla is rooted in Romania, where she studied chemical engineering in Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania, a place rich in European history. She then moved to Jülich, Germany for her Master project for 6 months, where she focused on immobilization of D-amino acid dehydrogenase. Due to her curious nature, she joined the Elk-crew as a PHD-student to research acyltransferases and finally moved to Austria. Lilla is multilingual, speaking Romanian, Hungarian, English, and she is polishing her German knowledge. In the course of her PHD-project she also has a short stay in Göttingen, Germany to gain hands on experience in protein crystallization. So as you can see, she is a real diamond for European research. Lilla is very social, as she loves to spend her free time visiting family and friends in Hungary and Romania. When she comes back, she always brings some treats for us to taste. Until now, she is not a big fan of coffee, but we are working on it to change that. The group is very happy to have her on board and we are looking forward to the next years of working together.

Sarah (2024)

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...is from Lecco (Italy), where the beautiful lake of Como is located. After her undergraduate studies in Milan, her new adventure started in Graz for a PhD at Acib GmbH with Prof. Toni Glieder and Margit Winkler. She was mostly hunting new enzymes for biocatalysis (HNLs and transaminases) in unconventional plants such as ferns from the styrian forests. Being very fond of research, she decided to do a PostDoc. The first one started in the Netherlands with Prof. Dick Janssen. There, she deepened her knowledge in biocatalysis and acquired knowledge in enzyme engineering with transaminases and demethylases. The 2nd PostDoc was then in the Department of Food Science, Ireland, working on enzymology of the human milk. Although the topic was interesting, Ireland was too far away from biocatalysis and the sun! Therefore, she decided to come back to Graz. By the end of 2019, Elisa started in our group to work on enzymatic cascaded for the valorisation of renewable resources. Beside research, Elisa is also a huge fan of taking adventurous travels, cooking or spending some social time out to party and since little Aki was born, getting sleep became one of her wishes. Elisa is a very communicative and helpful person and we are happy to have her in our group!

Erna (2020)

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Stephan was born and raised here in Styria, where he also studied biochemistry in Graz. Luckily for us, his interest in biocatalysis brought him to the Elk-crew already during his bachelor, and he is around ever since. After his Master thesis, where he worked with imine reductases, he moved to Basel, Switzerland, to work at Roche for 6 months and returned back to start his PHD in the Elk-crew, where he now explorers P450 peroxygenases. In his free time, Stephan is a passionate boulderer, plays Poker and loves to go hiking in the mountains with his dog, especially in summer to escape from the high temperatures in the cities. He is very open-minded and appreciates music especially when it is live, as he enjoys going to concerts. If you ever need a break, Stephan is the right person to ask for a spontaneous coffee, after which you will feel refreshed and motivated again. We enjoy having him in the team.

Sarah (2024)

Florian is a PhD 100% made in Graz. In fact, he spent all his theoretical studies at the Karl-Franzens University-Graz, learning from the first moment on how to handle a huge amount of enzyme related techniques. Attached to the elk crew, where he has been working as a summer student in four different occasions, learning how to handle ADHs and EREDs, he started his scientific career writing a bachelor thesis in biochemistry in the research group of Prof. Peter Macheroux. There he developed a method for apoprotein preparation of an OYE together with an experiment for the undergraduate lab course. Then he left Graz in an Erasmus+ program in Sweden (Lund University), learning more about advanced inorganic and organic synthesis. Unfortunately, Covid19 decided that the time in Sweden was enough, convincing him to come back to Graz. However, the elk call was so strong that his instinct brought him back to the other moose’s investigating innovative techniques related to cyanobacteria applying various types of enzymes for a novel NADPH recycling system, finishing his Master studies and thesis in October 2021. When you start being an elk you will be an Elk forever. Therefore, in November 2021 he decided to come back as an expert moose starting his PhD becoming a master of fatty acids. Out of science he is one of the best bakers you will ever meet. Bringing awesome cakes which have always the ability to surprise everyone with respect to the amazing cake design and of course the taste. Florian is an energetic, enthusiastic, skilled lab mate and also a joyful, trusted friend. It’s a great luck to spend these 4 year-long adventurous journeys with you, my friend.

Matteo (2022)