Congratulations to 3rd year PhD student Lisa Kennedy (Campopiano group) who won the Best PhD Talk Prize at the European Society for Applied Biocatalysis meeting “IBPRO2025” at Aarhus, Denmark. Her poster and flash presentation was titled “Biocatalysts under pressure; driving reaction in reduced atmosphere.” The conference (https://www.ibpro-symposium.eu/) brought together experts from academia and industry to discuss the industrial applications and impacts of biocatalysis. The meeting had a theme “INTENSIFYING BIOCATALYTIC PROCESSES. From Enzyme and Material Design to Industrial Applications.” Lisa’s work has been focused on driving biocatalytic cascade reactions to prepare amides from ketones with high % yield. Lisa has achieved this by designing the synthesis such that the unwanted by-product is volatile and can be evaporated under reduced pressure and/or gentle heating. Combining two immobilised biocatalysts on solid supports not only stabilises them, but also simplifies the reaction work up and product isolation. This novel “Biocatalysis in a Buchi” approach should make biocatalytic reactions more amenable to synthetic organic chemists. Lisa is sponsored by Syngenta Agrochemicals, EaSICat and IBioIC. Her industry supervisors are Dr Nick Mulholland and Dr Andrew Gomm who have been making suggestions on the various substrates to test with the cascade. I was pleased to present my work to academic and industrial experts. It was also great to receive feedback which will help me publish this work in a high impact journal. It will also help me prepare for my upcoming industrial placement. I’d also like thank the Neil Campbell travel grant for funding my trip to Denmark. Lisa Kennedy PhD Student, School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh I am really proud of Lisa’s success and delighted that her exciting work has received such positive support from biocatalysis experts from academia and industry. As a supervisor I think that’s exactly what a conference should provide. Dominic Campopiano Personal Chair of Industrial Biocatalysis Publication date 07 Apr, 2025
