Assist. Prof
Federico
Cerrone
Academic biography
Federico Cerrone is an assistant professor in Bioprocess Engineering in the School of Biotechnology at the Dublin City University since 2023.
He is a principal investigator of the Life Science Institute (LSI) and of the SFI-Bioeconomy Research Centre (BiOrbic).
He obtained his MSc in Marine Biology (Environmental Microbiology) from the Polytechnic University of Marche, in Ancona-Italy (2005) and his PhD (2011) from the University of Granada-Spain with a research project carried out in the Institute of Water Research focusing on the anaerobic digestion of organic residues for the microbial production of polyhydroxyalkanoates.
As a postdoctoral fellow (since 2011) worked at the University College Dublin under the supervision of Prof. Kevin O’Connor, leading different projects with a high cell density fermentation approach for the production of biobased polymers and biomolecules using different not-harmful microbial platforms (soil bacteria, yeasts and filamentous fungi).
He worked in two Irish RPO consortia (Technology Centre for Biorefining and Bioenergy-TCBB and Dairy Processing Technology Centre-DPTC).
He secured funds and lead two specific SFI-funded TIDA (Technology Innovation Development Awards) projects (microbially manufactured aromatic biopolymers as bio-scaffold for cortical neural cells cultivation and bio-chemosynthesis of sodium alkyl disulfates as specialty biosurfactants.
He is a co-PI in an EPA project (RefineTEXT) focusing on valorisation of waste textiles for biological production of organic acids.
Research interests
Federico’s research group is driven by interdisciplinarity with current collaborations with biologists (cancer metabolism, enzymology and synthetic biology) chemists (organic photochemistry and electrochemistry) and chemical engineers (bioprocessing modelling and membrane separation). His research vision has a three-pronged approach, focusing on:
· Biobased microbial manufacturing as platform for novel materials (composites for renewable batteries/supercapacitors)
· Microbial production of metabolites of therapeutic potential (bacterial therapy for cancer aggressiveness reduction)
· The leveraging of a range of microbial adaptations for bioremediation purposes.
He has a particular interest in a holistic approach that put sustainable circularity at the core of the production process, with branching in social sciences and life-cycle assessment.
Federico’s full list of publications can be found at the link below:
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8386-0222