Mattheos Koffas

Dorothy and Fred Chau ʼ71 Career Development Constellation Professor in Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering

Professor Mattheos Koffas, Ph.D., received his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University in Athens, Greece in 1994. He then joined the graduate program of the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT where he worked on improving amino acid biosynthesis from Corynebacterium glutamicum. After completing his Ph.D. in 2000, he joined DuPont’s Central Research and Development as a research scientist where he worked on engineering the carotenoid biosynthesis of an obligate methanotroph. In August of 2002 he joined the faculty of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at SUNY Buffalo as a tenure-track Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in the summer of 2008. In January of 2011 Prof. Koffas moved to his current position at Rensselaer. He was appointed Dorothy and Fred Chau '71 Career Development Constellation Professor in Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering in 2015.  In his research career, Dr. Koffas has worked with a variety of microorganisms and natural products including amino acids, polyphenols, fatty acids and terpenoids. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, more than 12 book chapters and holds 10 patents. He is a member of the editorials boards of various journals in the area of bioengineering, Editor in Chief of Metabolic Engineering Communications and Associate Editor for Biotechnology Advances. His research has been funded by federal agencies (NIH, ARPA-E and NSF), the state of New York (NYStem), and industrial partners (Evonik, Firstwave Technologies and Chromadex).