Prof. Peter Kast

Peter Kast, born in 1961 in Wetzikon, ZH, completed his undergraduate education in Natural Sciences (Dipl. Natw. ETH) at the ETH Zurich in 1986. He carried out his Diploma (MSc) Thesis, which was awarded with the ETH medal, at the Institute of Molecular Biology in the groups of Prof. Charles Weissmann and Prof. Hans Weber (University of Zurich). In 1991, he also won the ETH medal for his doctoral studies at the Institute of Microbiology of the ETH in the group of Prof. Hauke Hennecke. After postdoctoral work at the ETH (1991-1992) and at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, in the Departments of Chemistry and Molecular Biology with Prof. Donald Hilvert (1992-1995), he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Departments of Molecular Biology and Chemistry at Scripps in 1995. In 1997, he moved to the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences (Laboratory of Organic Chemistry) at the ETH Zurich. As a group leader supported by Swiss National Science Foundation grants he continued his independent work on enzyme investigation and engineering through directed molecular evolution by making use of genetically modified bacterial systems. Since 1998 he has been a lecturer of courses in Biological Chemistry on the directed evolution of proteins. In 2011, he was appointed as an honorary professor at the ETH Zurich.