Frida Michailidou
Early-Career Fellow 2021–2022

Dr. Freideriki («Frida») Michailidou (born 1991 in Ioannina, Greece) is passionate about protein engineering, biotechnolog,y and fragrance creation. Her research is at the intersections of biotechnology, perfumery, and consumer science, where Frida develops novel processes for the sustainable creation of fragrant materials. She completed her undergraduate studies in chemistry at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) and CPE Lyon (France).

After a Master’s in chemistry at University of Lyon 1 (FR) and a research stay in Shanghai (CN), Frida obtained her PhD in chemistry from the University of St Andrews (Scotland), in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline. There, she focused on structural and mechanistic studies of the biosynthesis of pacidamycin, a nucleoside-containing antibiotic with a clinically unexplored mode of action. Following a brief period working as an R&D scientist in industry (UK) and as a postdoc fellow at WWU Münster (Germany), Frida is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at ETH Zurich, where she is leading an ambitious project at the intersections of protein engineering and synthetic biology.

Frida has recently been nominated as a “ChemBioTalent” by ChemBioChem (Wiley) and was a participant in the 71st Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting and the Global Young Scientists Summit. In addition, she received the STARTUP CAMPUS award for innovative entrepreneurship in the field of fragrance development and has been named to the MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 Europe for 2023.