Rate My Professor Sandy Schmidt

Prof. Dr. Sandy Schmidt serves as Associate Professor with ius promovendi in the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Biology within the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen. She obtained her Diploma in Biochemistry, equivalent to an M.Sc., from the University of Greifswald in 2012, followed by a Ph.D. in Biotechnology in 2015, awarded summa cum laude for her work in protein engineering and biocatalysis under Prof. Uwe Bornscheuer. After her Ph.D., she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Delft University of Technology from 2015 to 2017. From 2017 to 2020, she led a research group at Graz University of Technology. In 2020, Schmidt joined the University of Groningen as a Tenure-track Assistant Professor via the Rosalind Franklin Fellowship, promoting to her current role in 2024.

Her research exploits the powerful reactivity and selectivity of enzymes from secondary metabolite pathways to synthesize natural products and analogs for pharmaceutical applications. Focal areas include the identification, characterization, and engineering of Rieske non-heme iron oxygenases for biocatalytic processes, development of artificial metabolic pathways and chemoenzymatic cascades via synthetic biology, and engineering of chassis strains and electron transfer pathways in microorganisms. Schmidt coordinates the Horizon Europe MSCA Doctoral Network 'BiodeCCodiNNg' and the H2020 MSCA-ITN 'ConCO2rde'. She has garnered major accolades such as the ERC Starting Grant, NWO Vidi Grant, and International Biocat Award in 2022, alongside the Rosalind Franklin Fellowship in 2020. Notable publications encompass "Biocatalytic oxidation reactions: a chemist's perspective" (2018), "Photo-biocatalysis: biotransformations in the presence of light" (2019), "An enzyme cascade synthesis of ε-caprolactone and its oligomers" (2015), "Overcoming the incompatibility challenge in chemoenzymatic and multi-catalytic cascade reactions" (2018), and "Fully automatized high-throughput enzyme library screening using a robotic platform" (2016). As Associate Editor for the Biocatalysis section of Frontiers in Catalysis, she advances the field through editorial and reviewing roles.