2 PhD fellowships within fungal fermentation for the production of single cell oils

The Faculty of Science and Technology at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) has vacant two 3-year PhD positions related to the development of fungal fermentation processes for valorizing different forestry and food rest materials and by-products for the production of single cell oils for animal and human use.
The PhD positions are funded by the NFR HAVBRUK2 project OIL4FEED ‘Oil from oleaginous microbial biomass derived from Norwegian resources as a sustainable alternative to replace Fish/Plant oils in fish feed’, and NFR FME project Bio4Fuels ‘Norwegian Centre for Sustainable Bio-based Fuels and Energy’.

Both projects aim at utilizing the unique potential of the versatile metabolism of oleaginous fungi to develop a sustainable process for the conversion of agriculture supply chain by-products, namely animal fat and protein fractions from meat industry and sugar-rich lignocellulose hydrolysates, into high-value single cell oils by fungal fermentation.

The PhD projects will provide a detailed understanding on: (1) How to formulate fermentation substrate from the selected food supply chain and forestry by-products; (2) What are the optimal process parameters for the production of fungal single cell oils; (3) Developing and optimizing fungal fermentation processes – submerged and simultaneous saccharification and fermentation; (4) monitoring fungal fermentation processes by using vibrational spectroscopy; (4) Optimizing lipid extraction from oleaginous fungi biomass;

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2 PhD fellowships within fungal fermentation for the production of single cell oils