Juan Asenjo De Leuze
He took enzymes from the digestive system of Antarctic krill, had bacteria produce them, and patented them. Today they wash clothes in cold water.
Antarctic krill live at temperatures close to zero. The enzymes in their digestive system have to work there, where ordinary enzymes become sluggish. They are, by evolutionary design, cold-water catalysts.
Asenjo isolated them, inserted their genes into bacteria to produce them at industrial scale, and patented them in the United States. Today there are detergents that wash in cold water because of that.
What a biochemical engineer does
Biology can produce a useful molecule. Biochemical engineering deals with the next problem, which is the expensive one: how to produce it in volume, how to separate it from the broth where it is mixed with thousands of other things, and how to purify it without destroying it. Asenjo developed his own mathematical and computational models to design those separation processes, particularly with aqueous two-phase systems.
His research lines span enzyme engineering, metabolic engineering, functional genomics and biomining: the use of microorganisms to extract metals, which is no small matter in a mining country.
Born
On 7 October. He is the son of Alfonso Asenjo Gómez, Premio Nacional de Ciencias 1973 (Chile's national science prize).
Chemical engineer
Universidad de Chile. Followed by an MSc at the University of Leeds.
Doctorate
University College London, under Peter Dunnill and M. D. Lilly.
Columbia University
Assistant professor of biochemical engineering.
University of Reading
Professor in the United Kingdom.
Returns to Chile
Full professor at the Universidad de Chile and director of the centre that is today CeBiB.
Cátedra Presidencial en Ciencias
Chile's Presidential Chair in Sciences. The only engineer to receive it.
Premio Nacional de Ciencias Aplicadas y Tecnológicas
Chile's national prize for applied sciences and technology. By unanimous decision of the jury.
Becomes president of the Academia Chilena de Ciencias
He had been vice-president since 2004.
National Academy of Engineering
Member of the American academy.
Ciencias Aplicadas y Tecnológicas 2004
the impact and quality of his research, backed by more than a hundred publications of world-class quality, particularly in enzyme engineering
Jury verdict, chaired by minister Sergio Bitar, translated from Spanish
The jury also included Luis Riveros, rector of the Universidad de Chile; Pablo Valenzuela, the previous laureate; Sergio Lavanchy, rector of the Universidad de Concepción; and Eric Goles for CONICYT. The record explicitly highlighted something that does not usually appear in these verdicts: having created the country's doctoral programme in biotechnology.
What the sources do not quite settle
He was born on 7 October 1949 and received the Premio Nacional de Ciencias Aplicadas y Tecnológicas in 2004.
The date matches between the Universidad de Chile and the English-language Wikipedia; the prize, between CONICYT and the press coverage of the time.
He is the son of Alfonso Asenjo Gómez, Premio Nacional de Ciencias 1973.
Recorded in his official Universidad de Chile profile.
The figures for his scientific output.
The 2004 record spoke of "more than a hundred" and his profile at the time gave 144 works; a recent Universidad de Chile article speaks of more than 275. This is not a contradiction: they are different moments of the same career.
His place of birth.
None of the sources consulted records it.
- Universidad de Chile. Perfil oficial de Premios Nacionales
View source → - CONICYT (2005). Fallo del jurado y composición del mismo
View source → - Cooperativa (2004). Anuncio del Premio Nacional
View source →
How to cite
This is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, as long as you give credit.
FísicaEterna. (2026). Juan Asenjo De Leuze — biography, FísicaEterna. Retrieved [access date] from https://www.fisicaeterna.cl/en/biographies/juan-asenjo
@misc{fisicaeterna_juan_asenjo,
author = {FísicaEterna},
title = {Juan Asenjo De Leuze — biography, FísicaEterna},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.fisicaeterna.cl/en/biographies/juan-asenjo},
note = {CC BY 4.0}
}