On December 3, 2021, Prof. Dr. Lena Keller gave her inaugural lecture at the Weincampus Neustadt. She dedicated her lecture to the topic "Innovative analysis methods in oenology - is the chemistry right?". Prof. Keller took up the newly established professorship in the Department of Oenology and Process Technology at Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences at the Neustadt Wine Campus in the winter semester 2021/22. The 36-year-old pharmacist with a doctorate is thus expanding the team of the German-French Master's degree program in Viticulture & Oenology.
Prof. Dr. Keller grew up in the Vorderpfalz region and began studying pharmacy at Saarland University after completing her A-levels in Frankenthal. After completing her doctorate on "Exploring the Biosynthetic Potential of Cystobacter fuscus - Characterization of New Structures and Studies on their Biosynthesis", she researched new active ingredients from blue-green algae at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (University of California, San Diego, USA) as part of a two-year research fellowship from the German Research Foundation. She taught there as a guest lecturer, among other things. Most recently, she worked as a scientist at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS).
Prof. Keller's research focused mainly on the isolation and structural elucidation of new bioactive natural products using HPLC-MS and NMR. Course director Prof. Dr. Maren Scharfenberger-Schmeer explains: "Prof. Dr. Keller's specialization in the analysis of complex matter is a great enrichment for wine research at the Weincampus. The metabolomics techniques used in natural product research can be easily transferred to wine analysis."
The Weincampus Neustadt, the joint scientific institution of the universities of Ludwigshafen, Kaiserslautern and Bingen and the DLR Rheinpfalz, launched the German-French Master's degree program in Viticulture & Oenology in 2020. As part of the expanded range of courses, a new professorship is now being established on campus. "We are delighted that the new colleague completes our team. We can now start the new semester with a full team," says course director Prof. Dr. Maren Scharfenberger-Schmeer.
