Prof. Dr. Joachim Fensterle

The fascination of life already captivated Fensterle during his school days in his Upper Swabian birthplace of Riedlingen on the Danube. Even then, it was clear to him that he wanted to learn as much as possible about the molecular basis of life.

After his civilian service as a paramedic, he therefore began his studies in biotechnology at the Technical University of Braunschweig. After his intermediate diploma (Vordiplom), he transferred to a French "Grand École," the École Supérieure de Biotechnologie (ESBS) in Strasbourg. In addition to the international atmosphere, he was also enthusiastic about the close interaction between students and professors there. He finally completed his diploma thesis, which focused on immunology and infection biology, in the research department of the company Chiron-Biocine in Siena, Italy.

His passion for the molecular interplay of microbial pathogens with the host organism and the targeted attack strategies by the immune system that can be derived from this then led him to pursue his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin. There, he worked with various bacterial pathogens such as Salmonella, Listeria, and the tuberculosis pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Shortly after his doctorate in 2000, Fensterle moved to the Institute for Medical Radiology and Cell Research at the University of Würzburg as head of the "bacterial tumor therapy" working group. The aim here was to specifically utilize the infectious biology arsenal of microorganisms for tumor therapy. Among other achievements, the team succeeded in modifying a Salmonella strain in such a way that it could, in principle, be used as a vaccine against prostate cancer. This work led to the spin-off of a GmbH (limited liability company), which Fensterle temporarily managed as managing partner, in addition to his work as an assistant at the university. A selection of his work can be found here.

The international, publicly traded pharmaceutical company Æterna Zentaris became aware of the project in 2005 and took it over. Fensterle also moved to the company as Head of Vaccine Development / Business Development. In addition to his activities in Business Development, he played a leading role in advancing the project to clinical maturity, which particularly included the establishment of industrial testing and production processes.

Current focuses at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences include the biotechnological production of bioplastics, especially from waste streams from the food industry. He is also working on the future contribution of renewable energies from biomass to the energy transition. In this context, he, together with his colleague Prof. Platte, has designed a combined biotechnological/chemical process that fundamentally enables CO2-negative energy production.

Another focus is on the further development of teaching – particularly with digital tools. Fensterle, together with partners, is investigating the extent to which smart glasses can be used to improve laboratory practicals. For this work, he was awarded the Fellowship for Innovation in Digital Teaching by the Stifterverband (Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany) in 2016. In recent years, Fensterle has acquired several third-party funded projects with budgets totaling over 1 million euros, which also dealt with improving teaching. In one project – SmartLabOER ( www.smartlaboer.de ), a consortium of three universities with Fensterle as consortium leader – the work with smart glasses was continued and a platform-independent solution was developed and tested that allows real-time support in laboratory practicals. In another project, BioLabSIM, Jupyter Notebook-based simulations were implemented in cooperation with RWTH Aachen University and the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences, which allow for improved preparation and execution of practicals. Fensterle was also project leader of the DAAD-funded cooperation with partner universities in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Among other things, students from Kharkiv were able to gain practical experience in summer schools at HSRW (Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences) in this project – despite the almost unbearable situation due to the Russian war of aggression. In this context, online teaching, which remains the only form of teaching for students from Kharkiv, was also further developed: Fensterle and his team developed a new platform for escape rooms that allows the creation and execution of escape rooms at a very high technical level, optimized for the needs of teaching. In this connection, an editor was also developed for the first time, which allows the creation of escape rooms in a no-code environment. Thus, all partners can create their own escape rooms, although these are based on a game engine and thus offer possibilities that go far beyond HTML-based solutions.

Fensterle is the author of the book Biotechnology for Dummies. Fensterle makes all the content he generated for the book, including videos, available via the website www.biotech-bites.com under a Creative Commons License.

Fensterle is a member of the German Society for Immunology and acts as a reviewer for several scientific organizations/journals. Fensterle is a reviewer and member of the Biology Expert Committee of ASIIN (Accreditation Agency for Study Programmes in Engineering, Informatics, Natural Sciences and Mathematics).