Aitor Ontoria

Aitor Ontoria (Donostia, 2000) earned his BSc in Chemistry, with a specialization in Bioscience, from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in September 2022. During his BSc thesis, he worked under the supervision of Dr. Ana Beloqui and Oihane Sanz on the synthesis and immobilization of enzyme-polymer hybrids for bioremediation. After completing his BSc, Aitor obtained a Master's degree in Chemistry and Polymers, with a specialization in polymers, from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in 2023. His Master's thesis focused on the development of new systems for carbon capture. In this work, different biocatalysts were studied for immobilization on microfluidic chips, and different enzyme-polymer hybrids were tested for this purpose. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Oihane Sanz and Dr. Elena Romero. Aitor’s research currently focuses on the use of enzyme-polymer hybrid materials to mitigate the cofactor dependency of enzymes. His research lies at the interface of biocatalysis and polymer science, taking advantage of both fields to develop more robust, reliable, and reusable catalysts. Aitor’s work focuses on the production of recombinant proteins and their subsequent modification with polymers capable of immobilizing and recycling cofactors. These enzyme-polymer hybrids can be further assembled into materials for different applications, as demonstrated in one of his latest publications, “Immobilization of Enzyme–Polymer Hybrids and Nanozymes Through Electrostatic Interactions: Toward Multicatalytic Microreactors with Controlled Nanoarchitecture” published in Small Science (2025).