Assistant Professor David Weissbrodt received his Ph.D. in environmental biotechnology & molecular biology from EPFL with doctoral education at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. He was a postdoctoral scientist at ETH Zürich and Eawag – Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, prior to joining Aalborg University, Denmark, and the TU Delft as Swiss NSF Fellow. Since 2016 he is a faculty member and principal investigator at the TU Delft Department of Biotechnology. He teaches in both the Life Science & Technology and Civil Engineering & Geosciences programs. He received one of the best teaching awards of the Environmental Engineering track two years (2017/18, 2018/19) in a row. He is a member of the management committees of the specialist groups on Environmental Engineering Education (E3) and Microbial Ecology & Water Engineering (MEWE) of the International Water Association (IWA). His research was internationally rewarded with the 2019 inaugural IWA MEWE Early Career Researcher Award at the University of Hiroshima, Japan.
The Weissbrodt Group for Environmental Life Science Engineering elucidates microbiome science and engineering. It owns a multidisciplinary competence in “process ecogenomics” that spans from eco-design and biorefinery to wastewater-based epidemiology and biosafety via environmental systems biology and chemical ecology.
We target (i) microbiomes from flocs, biofilms, and granules for water and resource recovery; (ii) microbial and metabolic drivers of exopolymerizations; (iii) microbial niche differentiation in mixed-culture fermentation; (iv) light-driven metabolic versatility of phototrophs; and (v) transfer of mobile xenogenic elements across water systems and their microbial communities.
We are active in two key national projects on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Together with the Institute of Biology Leiden, we lead research on the transmission of AMR genes and engineered DNA from transgenic biosystems into nature (“TARGETBIO”; Ph.D. candidate David Calderón Franco) within the Biotechnology & Safety Program of the Dutch Research Council. On collaboration with Wetsus (Ph.D. candidate Rebeca Pallarés Vega), we investigate the mechanisms of the spread of AMR in biological wastewater treatment.