Dr. ir. Kankana Kundu
Professional Experience
2020 – ongoing: Postdoctoral Researcher, Ghent University, UGent, Belgium.
2014 – 2019: Postdoctoral Researcher, "MicroDegrade" ERC project, Helmholtz Research Centre, Munich, Germany.
6/2012 – 9/2012: Visiting Scientist, Leibniz-Institut fuer Agrartechnik Potsdam-Bornim e.V. (ATB), Potsdam, Germany.
2009–2013: Teaching Associate, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India. Assisted subjects - Bioprocess Calculation, Biological Wastewater Treatment at bachelors and masters level
2007–2008: Lecturer, Bengal College of Engineering, India. Taught Process Control and Instrumentation, Genetics, and Biostatistics at bachelors level
2009–2013: Doctor of Philosophy, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. Specialized in Environmental Biotechnology
2005–2007: Masters in Technology, Harcourt Butler Technological Institute, India. Specialized in Biochemical Engineering
2001–2005: Bachelors in Technology, AAI–Deemed University, India. Specialized in Biotechnology
Application of microbial resources
- Structure and function of microbiome in ecosystem and engineered systems.
- Identification of key players, novel functional genes and pathways.
- Physiological adaptation of microorganisms under extreme low energy fluxes and bioavailability limitation.
Sustainable water management
- Bioremediation strategy development for micropollutant degradation in the aquatic environment/wastewater treatment plants.
- Design and optimization of novel processes for wastewater treatment with a focus on resource recovery.
Growth uncoupled production of industrially relevant chemicals in engineered systems
- Proteomics and transcriptomics approach to explore the regulation of pathways in organisms.
Organic isotope chemistry
- Compound-specific isotope analysis (CSIA) at natural isotopic abundance (i.e., of 13C/12C, 15N/14N) to understand the underlying transformation mechanisms in living organisms and environment.
Postdoctoral research, ERC project "MicroDegrade"
With a strong passion in water research area, I worked as postdoctoral scientist in the ERC project “MicroDegrade”, which aimed to reveal the bottleneck of the degradation of pollutants at a low (µg/L) concentrations at Helmholtz Research Center, Munich, Germany. We cultivated the potential degraders in engineered systems to mimic the natural growth condition observed in the aquatic environment and identified the potential bottlenecks of micropollutant degradation directly with the evidence of isotope fractionation. Besides exploring phenotypic heterogeneity, proteomics approach was also used to understand the regulation of organisms on the proteome level (expression of enzymes versus transporters) at low concentrations of micropollutants under bioavailability limitation. The results shows for the first time that mass transfer limitation across cell membrane acts as a rate limiting step for the degradation and triggers the physiological adaptation in the microorganisms.
PhD Research
I did my PhD in anaerobic treatment of high strength wastewater for carbon removal at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, India and also conducted a part of my research at the Leibniz-Institut für Agrartechnik, Potsdam, Germany through a DAAD scholarship. In the first part of the project, we worked on reactor engineering to establish a novel technology to be applied in wastewater treatment plants. One novel hybrid reactor technology was developed and designed (patented by my working group) to be capable of developing self-immobilized microbial granules in fluidized condition. Later, we focused on complex microbial communities targeting 16S r-RNA gene under different process parameters to enrich the understanding of the process for optimal bioenergy production.
Exploring the adaptation of marine microbiome under bioavailability limitation of energy sources and electron acceptors
