Merja Penttilä

Merja Penttilä is a Research Professor in biotechnology at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland an adjunct professor in synthetic biology at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland (until end of 2023). She has a long track record in development of microbial production hosts for enzymes, fuels, chemicals and materials using metabolic engineering and systems and synthetic biology. She was the director of the Finnish Academy funded Centre of Excellence (CoE) on White Biotechnology-Green Chemistry (2008–1013), a coordinator of a large EU project NEMO (2009–2013), director of Living Factories, a large strategic opening project funded by TEKES (current Business Finland, 2014–19). She was a co-PI of the CoE Hyber on Molecular Engineering of Biosynthetic Hybrid Materials (2014–2019), and is a co-PI of a recently funded CoE Liber (2022–2029) on Life-Inspired Hybrid Materials. She was granted funding for the Centre of Young Synbio Scientists (2019–2026). She was the initiator of the Synbio Powerhouse ecosystem in Finland and the EU level IBISBA ESFRI Consortium for acceleration of biotechnology. In 2012 she obtained a personal recognition prize in bioeconomy from the Wihuri Foundation of International Prizes, and the Charles D. Scott Award, Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (USA) in 2019. She has been acting in many scientific advisory and evaluation committees globally and is currently a member of the Scientific Committee of the EU Circular bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU). In January 2023 the President of the Republic of Finland granted her an honorary title of the Academician of Science. She is a co-inventor in ~50 patents and has close to 300 peer-reviewed publications.