Dr. Kira Schipper completed her BSc. in Life Science and Technology at Delft Technical University and Leiden University (The Netherlands) in 2009, followed by a Master degree in Biochemical Engineering from Delft Technical University in 2011.

During her Master, she worked on isolating novel extremophilic microorganism from ultra-basic serpentinizing springs at the J. Craig Venter Institute (San Diego,USA), as well as competed in MIT’s iGEM competition, where her team made it to the finals. Furthermore, she also completed an internship at TNO in Delft, looking into methods the use of membrane pertraction for the separation and recovery of high-value fine chemicals from algae. After completing her Master in 2011, she moved to Qatar, where she worked as a Bioprocess Engineer at TNO’s Middle East Branch office, and later as the office’s Operations and Marketing Manager.

In 2014 she started working at Qatar University’s Algal Technologies Program (ATP) as a Research Associate, where she is responsible for managing a number of the program’s industry funded research projects, as well as involved in business development and project acquisition. In 2016 she started her PhD as a collaboration between Wageningen University & Research (department of Bioprocess Engineering) and Qatar University (ATP), which she completed in 2021.

She is currently still active at Qatar University, in business development, project management, as well as exploring options for scale-up and commercialization of algae-based technologies.

Professional Profile

• Bioprocess engineer with over 10 years of experience and in-depth knowledge of microalgal (production) processes at lab and pilot scale, and techno-economic modeling of associated value chains.
• Recognized performance in business development, project acquisition, and project management for related R&D projects with industrial stakeholders; with total budgets of over US$1.5 million.
• Experienced, proficient and comfortable working cross-cultures with diverse teams and delivering high-quality results within budget and timelines.

Education