Rolf Schmid studied chemistry, biochemistry and microbiology in Munich and Freiburg (Germany). After postdoctoral training in Gif-sur-Yvette (France) and Austin (USA), he joined Henkel KGaA in Dusseldorf (Germany) where he worked for 15 years, eventually as Director R&D Biotechnology. In 1987, he was invited to direct the Institute for Enzyme Technology at Braunschweig Technical University and the Division of Enzyme Technology and Chemistry of Natural Products at the 'Gesellschaft fur biotechnologische Forschung' (GBF) in Braunschweig (Germany). From 1993 to 2009, he was Director of the Institute for Enzyme Technology at Stuttgart University (Germany). After having obtained an MBA diploma from the University of Reutlingen in 2007, he founded the consulting agency www.bio4business.eu in Stuttgart, followed in 2015 by the Steinbeis Consulting Agency www.asia-tech.eu. Dr. Claudia Schmidt-Dannert is Distinguished McKnight Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, at the University of Minnesota (USA). She studied Biology and Biochemistry at the Carolo Wilhelmina University Braunschweig (Germany), where she received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1994. Schmidt-Dannert held a Postdoc position in Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Stuttgart (Germany) and became Professor at the University of Minnesota in 2010. Her research focuses on exploring and utilizing the metabolic machineries of plants and microorganisms to enable the discovery and synthesis of valuable microbial or plant-derived compounds in engineered microbial cells.
