Onyinye Okonkwo, Ph.D.

Process Engineering Postdoctoral Fellow

Onyinye Okonkwo is a Process Engineering Postdoctoral Fellow on the fermentation team. She has experience in molecular detection and monitoring of microbial communities in natural and engineered environments and biomass conversions (dark fermentative hydrogen production and valuable metabolites, anaerobic digestion for methane production, or transformation of brominated benzenes).

Previously, Onyinye worked as a researcher in the Bio and Circular Economy research group at Tampere University, conducted in the framework of the Advanced Biological Waste to Energy Technologies (ABWET) Innovative Training Network (ITN) European Joint Degree Programme. ABWET had four partner organizations: University of Cassino and Southern Lazio (Italy, coordinator), Université Paris-Est (France), IHE Delft (the Netherlands) and Tampere University of Technology (Finland). Her work focused on the use of microbial strategies to enhance dark fermentative hydrogen production and development of microbial monitoring methods for dark fermentation.

Onyinye received her Doctoral degree in Environmental technology within the department of Chemistry and Bioengineering at Tampere University of Technology, Finland and her Master of Science degree in Microbiology at University of Oldenburg, Germany.

She currently works on the Feedstock Conversion Interface Consortium project to determine how variability in feedstock influences performance of biocatalysts for the conversion of value added products; in an effort to develop tools to mitigate the risks posed by these variables.

Education

  • Ph.D. in Environmental technology, Tampere, Finland  
  • M.S. in Microbiology, University of Oldenburg, Germany

Professional Experience

  • Research Assistant, Department of Isotope biogeochemistry, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Germany
  • Researcher, Department of Chemistry and bioengineering, Tampere University, Finland
  • Research fellow, INRAE Laboratoire de Biotechnologie de l’Environnement, France
  • Research fellow, Università degli Studi di Cassino e Del Lazio Meridionale, Italy