Director
Prof. R. Gross

Research in the laboratory of Dr. Gross encompasses a wide variety of projects directed toward development of new enzyme and chemo-enzymatic strategies and methods for the synthesis of polymers for a wide variety of applications. Chemists, biochemists, microbiologists, materials scientists, engineers, physicists and clinicians work in teams on projects ranging from enzymatic and chemo-enzymatic routes to monomers, macromers, polymers and bioactive molecules. Novel enzyme engineering techniques and methods for enzyme immobilization are used to develop efficient catalysts that function under practical conditions. From these studies our group is developing fundamental new knowledge in enzyme structure-activity relationships for polymer synthesis and degradation reactions as well as an understanding of critical design elements that stabilize and activate enzymes on surfaces and within macroporous resins.

Visiting Senior Research Scientist

Dr. Mark Schofield joined the Center for Biocatalysis in September, 2007.  He received his Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from MIT under the direction of Professor Richard R. Schrock and performed post-doctoral research at the University of Chicago with Professor Jack Halpern.  His research interests span homogeneous catalysis, bioinorganic chemistry, electronic structure calculations (via QM and MM methods) and the development of DNA-binding metal complexes.  Prior to his arrival at Polytechnic University, Dr. Schofield taught and conducted research with undergraduates at Williams and Haverford Colleges.

Dr. Mark H. Schofield
Location: RH 717; Extension: 3288

Postdoctoral Fellows and Research Students

Dr. Bhaskar Sharma, born in 1976 in Agra India, joined the group as postdoc in 2005. His current work interests focused on the hyperbranched polymers which has unique physical and chemical properties due to their highly branched architectures. These hyperbranched polymers are potential candidates for many applications i.e., drug delivery system, additive coatings, building blocks of functional materials, and conductive materials etc. Literatures report the synthesis of these interesting hyperbranched polymers using tedious chemical routes which are not environmentally friendly. While in group’s work and Dr. Bhaskar Sharma’s effort, a novel eco-friendly “enzymatic-mediated” routes to synthesize hyperbranched polymers having multi-functionality has been developed.

Location: RH 619 ; Extension: 4041

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Dr. Thavasi Renga Thavasi, joined the group as Postdoctoral Research Fellow in August 2007. He got his Ph.D in Marine Biology (Marine Microbiology) at Centre of Advanced Study in Marine Biology, Annamalai University, India.  His current research interests are microbial biosurfactants and their applications. Biosurfactants are biopolymers with hydrophobic and hydrophilic moieties and these polymers can be used as emulsifier, wetting agent, detergent, antimicrobial agent etc. The goal of the project is commercial production of biosurfactants and development of novel products.

Dr. Jiali Cai joined the group in 2006 as a postdoctoral research fellow. His research interests are related to characterization of materials properties including polymers and nanocomposites. His present work is focused on characterization of those polymers from enzyme-catalyzed polymerization using instruments such as WAXD, SAXS, DSC, AFM, TEM, SEM, etc.
Location: RH819; Extension: 3408

Dr Minmin Cai joined the group in 2006 as a postdoctoral research fellow. He got his PhD on Applied Chemistry in 2002. His current research focused on the analysis and characterization of biopolymers and other organic materials with GC-MS, SEC-MALS-VS-RI, GPC, HPLC etc. He also maintains those instruments for better condition. Besides these works, he is also involved in the project of separation and purification UV active materials from nature seaweeds.
Location: RH 817; Extension: 3813

Dr Wenhua Lv joined the group in 2005 as a as a postdoctoral research fellow. His research focused on the Engineering of Candida tropicalis for ω-hydroxylation of fatty acids, developing a whole cell biotransformation process for the conversion of long chain saturated fatty acids to ω-hydroxyfatty acids efficiently and specifically, including the construction of engineered Candida tropicalis using protein engineering; using Long-chain ω-hydroxyfatty acids as the monomers that mimic the structure of biodiesel to synthesize a new family of fuel-latent plastics.
Location: RH 731; Extension: 4070

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Wenchun Xie joined the group in 2004 as an analytical scientist and lab management assistant. Her current work includes: instrument maintenance of GPC(gel permeation chromatography) with different mobile phases (such as H2O, Tetrahydrofuran, Chloroform) and LC-MS; sample preparation and analysis; data analysis.
Location: RH 817; Extension: 3813

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Eng. Åsa, Ronkvist joined the group as a doctoral student in 2004 from Sweden. Her Ph.D thesis research topic is cutinase-catalyzed polymer modification reaction, which covers Enzyme purification and characterization; Cutinase structure-activity relationships;activity for a variety of polymer modification reactions;kinetic studies; assessment of enzyme selectivity during polymer modifications reactions.
Location: RH 619; Extension: 4041

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Yaniv Z Ravee joined the group as a doctoral student in 2006. His research focused on the enzyme catalyzed polyester degradation: I) trigger polyester degradation using enzyme-catalysis, II) Protein Engineering of Cutinase for degradation of bio-polyesters. He got his MS degree in biomaterials science from New York University in 2004 and BA degree in biochemistry from Rutgers University in 2000.

Location: RH 810; Extension: 3209

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Viswanathan Kodanda Raman joined the group as a doctoral student in 2005. He got his B. Sc in Chemistry in 1999 and M. Sc in Chemistry in 2002 from University of Delhi, India. His Ph.D thesis research involved in-vitro synthetic methods for oligopeptide synthesis, which included biocatalytic methods to synthesize oligopeptide macromers; using chemo-enzymatic strategies to conjugate oligopeptide macromers to form higher molar mass products; copolymerizations: oligomer structure, sequence, end-groups, comonomer reactivity relationships; enzyme-substrate specificity studies.
Location: RH 819; Extension: 3408

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Geng Li joined the group as a doctoral student in 2003. He got his B.Sc and M. Sc in Polymer Science from Dalian University of Technology in 1992 and 1996. His current thesis research topic focused on in-vitro synthetic methods for oligopeptide synthesis, which included control sequence and end-group; Oligomerization kinetics; copolymerizations: oligomer structure, sequence, end-groups, comonomer reactivity relationships; enzyme-substrate specificity studies.

Location: RH 715; Extension: 3820

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Jun Hu joined the group as a doctoral student in 2003. She got her M. Sc in Polymer Science in 2003 and B.Sc in Applied Chemistry in 2000 from University of Science & Technology of China (USTC). Currently her research interests are hyperbranched polyol-polyesters containing numbers functional groups and synthesis of polyol-based polyesters catalyzed by lipase B from Candida antartica (CAL-B). The lipase is physically immobilized on Lewatit beads (Novozyme 435) or other new carriers developed by group team.
Location: RH 619; Extension: 4041

Jun Yang joined the group as a doctoral student in 2004. She got B.Sc in Chemical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2005 and M. Sc in University of Wyoming in 2004. Her current research involved enzyme catalyzed polyester synthesis, which included designing a set of engineering enzyme for polymer synthesis, a screening method for polymerization of fatty acid catalyzed by enzyme variants, and testing the property of synthesized polyester via above mentioned approach.
Location: RH 731; Extension: 4070

Chen Liu joined the group as a doctoral student in 2006. She got her B.Sc at East China University of Science and Technology in 2005. Her current research work topic is N435 catalyzed synthesis of branched aliphatic polycarbonate polyols and aliphatic polycarbonate containing siloxane functionalities. She like reading, music, movies, hiking, skating, and any other sports.
Location: RH 731; Extension: 4070

Chong Li joined the group as doctoral student in 2006. He got his B.Sc at East China University of Science and Technology, majoring at in Polymer Science and Engineering. Before joining in Prof. Gross group, he spent a year in New Jersey Institute of Technology on chemistry synthesis. His current research project is to use enzymes as catalyst to modify (esterify) maltodextrin.
Location: RH 715; Extension: 3820

Atul.S.Bhangale joined the group as a doctoral student in 2006. He got his Master degree on Bioprocess Technology at Institute of Chemical Technology, University Of Mumbai (UDCT) in 2004, India.
His current Research is focused on the production and purification of lipase and cutinase from recombinant strains of Pichia pastoris and S.Fusarium respectively and optimization of fermentation and enzyme purification protocol.
Location: RH 810 (Protein engineering laboratory)
Extension: 3297

David Feder joined the group as doctoral student in Fall 2005. He did his undergrad study in Control Engineering at Tel Aviv Univ. in Tel Aviv, Israel, and got MS degree from Polytech Univ in Systems Engineering in Spring 2001. Current research project is exploring the use of enzymes from the Cutinase family as biocatalysts in polymer synthesis.

Location: RH 619, RH 731, ext: 4070

Dr. Asya Bakhtina joined the group in 2007 as a postdoctoral research fellow. She has extensive experience in fabrication and characterization of nanostructured materials. Her current research includes studies of natural biodegradable polymers, in particular poly(-glutamic acid) for biomedical applications. Polymer biosynthesis, modification, fabrication of nanoparticles as well as characterization and tuning of properties of obtained materials are under investigation.
Location: RH 713 , ext: 3602

Dr. Ahmad Ali Shaik joined the group as a postdoctoral fellow in 2007. He got his Ph.D in Organic Chemistry in 2006 at Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, India. He has more than five years research experience and training in organic and biological chemistry. His current work would focus on the development of novel enzymatic methods for biocatalytic applications and extensive utilization of lipases in synthesis of biologically active natural and synthetic compounds.
Location: RH 819, ext: 3408

Dr Zhigang Xie joined the group in 2007 as a postdoctoral research fellow. He got his PhD on polymer chemistry in 2007. His current research focused on the synthesis of functional biodegradable polymer by using enzyme as catalysts; exploring the use of Cutinase and Transglutaminases as biocatalysts in polymer synthesis.
Location RH 619, Extension 4041

Manoj Ganesh joined the group in 2006 as doctoral student in Material Chemistry. He got his B. Tech in Polymer Technology at Crescent Engineering College, Chennai, TN, India. He had some research experience in biodiesel and biodegradable polymers. His current work is enzymatic degradation studies of polycaprolactone.
Location: RH 713, ext: 3602

Vishva Acharya joined the group at Spring 2006 as graduate assistant under various experiments.


Location: RH 731, ext: 4070

Dr Zhiqiang Liu joined the group in 2007 as a postdoctoral research fellow. He got his PhD on Biotechnology in 2005. His current research focused on the Engineering Candida antarctica lipase B for Olefin Metathesis Polymerization and the Sequences, Structures and Activities Profile of Cutinases for Polymerization. The research combines understanding of chemistry, biology and engineering and as a result is highly interdisciplinary.
Location: RH 823; Extension: 3123

Dr. Xiaoyan Zhang joined the group in 2008 as a postdoctoral research fellow. She got her PhD on Biochemistry engineering in 2007. Her research focused on the biosynthetic routes to long-chain diacid building blocks from various fatty acid substrates by Candida tropicalis, engineering Candida tropicalis to produce ω-hydroxyfatty acids specifically and efficiently. Her research also includes the purification and quantification of proteins using FPLC system.
Location: RH 731; Extension: 4097