Research Interest : Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Prospecting.
My interest in microbiology started during my undergraduate study at the Department of Biology, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Indonesia. I studied taxonomy and diversity of yeasts from litter samples in Mt. Halimun, West Java. Then I joined the one-year program (2006 – 2007) of UNESCO Postgraduate Inter-University Course in Biotechnology (Mahidol University, Thailand – Osaka University, Japan) with a research topic: Isolation and Potential Application of Endophytic Actinomycetes from Thai Medicinal Plants.
I continued my postgraduate studies (2009 – 2014) at Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, International Center for Biotechnology (ICBiotech), Osaka University, Japan, focusing on Biosynthetic Mechanisms of Streptogramin type B Antibiotic from Streptomyces virginiae. In 2015 – 2016, I received a fellowship from The Institute of Fermentation (IFO; Osaka, Japan) as a visiting researcher at the Department of Microbial Resources, Graduate School of Agricultural Sciences, Tohoku University, Japan.
The research project was to investigate the bacterial diversity and its application in an Indonesian geothermal area. Since then, I grew interested in investigating indigenous microorganisms from Indonesia, based on culture-dependent and culture-independent methods, and their potential applications.
In 2018, I continued the research project for my doctoral thesis at the Department of Biology, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Indonesia, focusing on Taxonomic Study of Rare Thermophilic Actinobacteria and Screening for Novel Secondary Metabolites. In recent years, I employed polyphasic taxonomy approaches, whole genome sequence analysis, phylogenetic, phylogenomic, genome mining, and other bioinformatics analysis for novel microbial taxa from Indonesia. I am also investigating microbial potency for bioremediation, biocontrol, and pharmaceutical applications by screening for potential enzymes, antibiotics, and other bioactive compounds.
Furthermore, purification and characterization of bioactive compounds and enzymes, as well as their biosynthetic mechanisms by clarifying their biosynthetic gene clusters within the microbial genom
