Follow me: Exploring synthetic chemistry
Alumni mentors share their workplace and knowledge with rising seniors
Mentor: Manuel Montori ’12, biotech engineer
Student: Nora Sharma, Charles Potje
Nora Sharma ’24 and Charles Potjer ’24 worked alongside Manuel Montori ’12 in the lab at his Austin, Texas, startup, Spero Technologies. Montori and his co-founder are conducting research to benefit biological manufacturing technology, using a system based on recombinant enzymes to produce compounds like pigments, vitamins and aromatics.
Sharma and Potjer familiarized themselves with Spero’s research and the academic literature supporting it, then moved on to tasks in the lab. Sharma streamlined the lab’s process of growing Physarum enzyme in a bioreactor. Potjer replicated a process called chitin-binding, or immobilizing enzymes, making it easier for them to be purified and increasing their life span.
