Gerrit Poelarends is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and head of the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Biology at the University of Groningen. His research group is interested in the discovery and design of novel biocatalysts and biosynthetic pathways for the sustainable production of pharmaceuticals and food additives, with a strong focus on biologically active noncanonical amino acids. Professor Poelarends obtained his undergraduate education in Biological Sciences at the University of Groningen, where he performed undergraduate research in Molecular Microbiology with Wil Konings. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the same university for his research with Dick Janssen, and spent almost three years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin working on mechanistic enzymology with Christian Whitman. Professor Poelarends joined the faculty at the University of Groningen in 2006 and was promoted to full professor in 2017. He currently is the scientific director of the Groningen Research Institute of Pharmacy. Throughout his career, Professor Poelarends has been involved in multi-disciplinary research consortia and public–private partnership initiatives. He has been elected and entrusted by his international peers to fulfil the role of chair of diverse scientific societies and conferences, and has received prestigious personal research grants for his innovative enzyme engineering work, including the NWO Veni, Vidi and Vici grants.