Profile

Lasse Nielsen

Copenhagen, Denmark Biology student at Copenhagen University

Age: 24

Education and training:
- Biology student at Copenhagen University

You may ask: “How come a biology student chooses to work in the field of biodiesel at Novozymes, when you clearly need to be roaming the forests and fields of the countryside”?

To answer your question appropriately, I will need to give you brief insight in to my early life and childhood.

As a child I indulged in both exploring nature (as in my parents backyard) and building weird contraptions. I loved challenging my imagination and to solve different problems. My favorite toolkit was a collection of Technic Lego which I build all kind of weird machines with. Unfortunately I was often limited by the range of accessories in my collection and many of my ideas had to be abandoned. Forexample one of these ideas was a biomechanicle hand.

My interest in biology started out as a plain love for being outside and appreciating all living things.  As I grew up and my parents got cable tv (and Animal Planet) my interest in biology and the diversity of the natural world grew steadily.

Thus at the end of ninth grade my first priority was to become a biologist. At that point I had also realized that becoming an engineer required a fair amount of mathematics and since math is not my cup of tea biology was the natural choice in a future career.

At high school my interest in biology and the natural world grew to an even higher level due to the teachings of my talented female biology teacher. Through the three years at high school she introduced me topics such as genetics and physiology and thus besides the natural world I also developed an interest in general biology.

So after my graduation in 2004 I knew for sure that biology was my call and applied for studying biology at the University of Copenhagen. The first year I maintained the passion for ecology and living beings, but this soon changed as more specific lectures was added to the scheme (especially population dynamics). My main interest also changed in January 2009 when I got a job at RD in Novozymes Bagsværd. Here I realized that enzymes and proteins had much more potential than just laundry powder or in pharma. I overcome the fear of being the annoying student worker and asked my boss Henriette Draborg for help finding an interesting subject for a master project. She soon had collected a range of interesting project descriptions on projects going on at Novozymes Bagsværd. Especially one project appealed to my interest in science and new found love for enzymes, a project concerning biodiesel. So I talked with the project leader Per Munk Nielsen and agreed to join the project.

This brings me to where I am know, working on the kinetics of the biodiesel reaction using free enzymes. Hopefully you will enjoy my blog until November this year, were I am supposed to hand in my project.