Fatima Madugu

Fatima Madugu is a Daphne Jackson Fellow working as a Post-doctoral Research Associate based in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Manchester (UofM) under the supervisor of Professor Costantinos Theodoropoulos. Her fellowship is sponsored by the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC). She uses a combination of experimental and computation modelling to enhance microalgae cultivation and evaluate the biochemical production of various high-value products used as raw materials for fuel, food, drug and beauty industries. In her project, she uses chemical engineering methodologies to cultivate various microalgae strains. Her current work is with Chlorella sorokiniana, Porphyridium purpureum, Nannochloropsis gaditiana, and chlamydamonous. She cultivates them in a photoautotrophic and mixotrophic mode in nitrogen content media. she grows the cultures in vessels of different sizes of 500 Duran vessels, 12L bubble column Photobioreactor (PBR), and 500L raceway ponds with a volume of 300L. She builds predictive models for microalgae growth kinetics, including models related to algae growth rate and substrate concentration in culture media. She has an understanding of kinetic models associated with microorganism growth, models related to carbon concentration and models on nitrogen concentration.

She is a member of the BBSRC People and Talent Strategy Advisory Panel (PAT SAP) group, where she contributes ideas and provides solutions to challenges affecting early career researchers.

She supervised foundation stage projects at the University of Manchester. Mentor post-doctoral researchers and PhD students in her team.