Successful PhD defense: Katharina Ost finished her doctorate at the Hochschule Osnabrück, supervised by our alumna Prof. Mareike Dirks-Hofmeister

Today, Katharina Ost successfully defended her PhD thesis in the presence of friends and colleagues, her Doktormutter Prof. Mareike Dirks-Hofmeister, and her two other committee members, Prof. Arthur Ram from the University of Leiden, NL, and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher (who, thus, became Doktorgroßvater, as Mareike pointed out) from the University of Münster which is also in charge of awarding the doctoral degree. Kathy wrote her Bachelor thesis in industry at BRAIN AG and was already working on a topic about protein production in Aspergillus niger, which was provided by the company WeissBioTech where Mareike was responsible for R&D. At the end of her Master studies in Münster, she won Bruno’s support to pursue her MSc thesis in his group in a very close collaboration with Arthur in Leiden, and she began working on the cell walls of A. niger. When Mareike became Professor for Food Biotechnology in Osnabrück, Kathy joined her team and became her first doctoral student. She continued the successful collaboration with Arthur’s and Bruno’s group, marveling at the formidable flexibility of fungal cell walls: even the knock-out of all alpha-glucan synthase genes and all chitin-glucan crosslinker genes did not markedly affect the fungus’ performance. But her main focus was on developing a screening system that will allow to optimize protein secretion in this fungus which is an important workhorse for biotechnology and the bioeconomy. Being the first doctoral candidate in a newly established research group brings a lot of challenges and responsibilities, but Kathy is now well prepared for whatever is to come. And we are looking forward to find out what that will be. All the best, Kathy!