CRETUS STAFF

Thelmo Lu Chau

Assistant Professor
Department: Chemical Engineering
Centre: Faculty of Sciences (Lugo)
Research Group: Biotecnología Ambiental (BIOGROUP)
Phone: +34 8818 16016 (CRETUS), 24136 (Lugo)
Email: thelmo.lu@usc.es
Web Group: Thelmo Lu| Group of Environmental Biotechnology

Chemical Engineer from the National University of Trujillo (Peru, 1993). His degree was accredited by the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) in 2003. Prior to starting his scientific career, he completed a pre-professional internship at a brewery (3 months) and worked in a fishmeal plant in Piura (Peru, 1995) as a Shift Supervisor and Quality Control Laboratory Assistant (20 months). He enrolled in the PhD program in Food Science and Engineering at the Faculty of Sciences of Lugo (USC, 1999) and completed his doctoral thesis on operational strategies to improve plasmid stability and expression in recombinant yeasts, supervised by Enrique Roca and Juan Lema. He carried out a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Biological Research (CIB, CSIC) in Madrid, in the Lignin Biodegradation group (6 months, 2000), under the supervision of María Jesús Martínez. During this stay, he optimized the production of a recombinant versatile peroxidase expressed in Aspergillus nidulans.
Subsequently, he worked as a PhD Technologist as part of the Isabel Barreto Program (Xunta de Galicia) in the Environmental Engineering research group (BioGroup) of the Department of Chemical Engineering at USC, and as an Associate Researcher on various national and European projects and contracts related to biorefineries, in collaboration with sector companies (ABENGOA, VEOLIA, IFP Energies Nouvelles, among others). Since 2024, he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Faculty of Sciences of Lugo (USC). He has been a CONCYTEC Researcher (Group C.M. Medrano, Level I) for the National Council of Science, Technology and Technological Innovation (Peru) since 2019.
His research topics have focused on the production and application of enzymes (glucanases, cellulases, and ligninolytic enzymes) using natural microorganisms, mainly ligninolytic fungi, and genetically modified organisms (S. cerevisiae, Aspergillus sp., E. coli). These enzymes have been employed in the degradation of recalcitrant compounds, as substitutes for process stages in industrial applications (cellulose pulp bleaching, lignin activation), hydrolysis and pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass, and in the synthesis of bioactive compounds (flavonoid oligomers). He has also worked on the removal of contaminants (PAHs, fuel oil, insecticides) from soils using ligninolytic fungi and other biological systems.

Research Lines 

• Biological pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass, solid-state fermentation.
• Production of biofuels (ethanol, butanol) and other bioproducts (bioplastics, ectoine).
• Valorization of agro-industrial waste and lignocellulosic biomass to obtain high-value compounds (polyphenolic antioxidants, bioadhesives, etc.), using biorefinery concepts.