Dr. Michael Köpke is the Chief Innovation Officer at LanzaTech, a public company that uses biology to capture and transform carbon into sustainable products such as fuels, chemicals, proteins and materials. Michael joined LanzaTech in 2009 and been instrumental in building up the company’s synthetic biology program and computational biology platform. In his current role, Michael is overseeing the process of innovation and technology partnerships. Michael is a pioneer in synthetic biology of CO2-fixing microbes and carbon-negative biomanufacturing with over 20 years of experience in the industrial biotech field. Michael holds a Ph.D. in biotechnology from University of Ulm and is an inventor of over 500 patents and author of more than 50 peer-reviewed publications. Michael is also an awardee of the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge award for Greener Synthetic Pathways. Beyond his role at LanzaTech, Michael serves as an adjunct faculty at Northwestern University and council member at the Engineering Biology Research Consortium, where he chairs the roadmapping working group. Michael led and contributed to various community-based efforts including development of a research roadmap on engineering biology for climate and sustainability by a consortium of over 90 experts, as well as serving on several editorial and scientific boards and as co-chair for international conferences and workshops. More information: www.lanzatech.com (Homepage) michael-koepke/ (LinkedIn) @michaelkoepke80 (Twitter) Selected work: Carbon-negative, scaled-up production of acetone and isopropanol by gas fermentation (Nature Biotechnology, Cover Article, 2022) Engineering Biology for Climate & Sustainability: A Research Roadmap for a Cleaner Future (EBRC Roadmap, 2022) Biotechnology-driven carbon recycling (European Biotechnology Magazine, Editorial, 2022) Pollution to products: Recycling of “above ground” carbon by gas fermentation (Current Opinion Biotechnology, 2020)
