OXIPRO is delighted to welcome onboard Yerko Fredes, who has recently joined the Group of Bioprocess Engineering and Applied Biocatalysis of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) as a PhD student working on the OXIPRO project. Yerko’s research will focus on the development the cotton-textile biobleaching process.
Yerko started his academic training in 2012 studying Civil Engineering in Biochemistry at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (Chile), obtaining his Bachelor’s degree in 2018 from researching lipases to obtain compounds of interest for the pharmaceutical industry.
He subsequently continued his studies with lipases by embarking on a Masters degree in Biochemical Engineering in biocatalysis at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. There, he studied the use of heterofunctional supports for the immobilization of lipases to obtain biocatalysts with potential use in industry, obtaining his degree in 2020.
In the same year, he began to work in Grupo IDIN, an R&D company in the Valparaíso region (Chile), on different projects awarded or in conjunction with companies from the same region for the design and construction of protein purification columns, phage production for the control of bacteria, development of biopesticides, and the improvement of fermentation processes in the wine industry.