Dr. Garabed Antranikian studied biology at the American University in Beirut. At the University of Göttingen he completed his Ph.D. in microbiology in 1980 in the laboratory of Professor Gerhard Gottschalk and qualified as a postdoctoral (habilitation) lecturer in 1988. In 1989 he was appointed to a professorship in microbiology at the Hamburg University of Technology, where he has been the head of the Institute of Technical Microbiology since 1990. From 1993 to 1999 he coordinated the EU network project “Extremophiles” with 39 partners from academia and industry. From 2000 to 2003 professor Antranikian coordinated the national network project “Biocatalysis” and is coordinating the Innovation Center “Biokatalyse” (“ICBio”, supported by DBU) since 2002. He was president of the International Society for Extremophiles and is chief editor of the scientific journal “Extremophiles”. In 2004 he was awarded the most prestigious prize for environment protection by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. Since 2007 he is the coordinator of the “Biocatalysis 2021” and the "Biorefinery2021" clusters of the Ministry of Education and Research. He is the chairman of the “IBN Industrial Biotechnology North”. Dr. Garabed Antranikian is a member of the Academy of Sciences of Hamburg and of the Union of the German Academies of Sciences (acatech). He was vice president for academic affairs from 2009 to 2011 before he became president of Hamburg University of Technology in April 2011. Prof. Antranikian is also the Director of the Institute of Technical Microbiology at the TUHH with more than 20 researchers, including Ph.D. candidates and postdocs.