New in the BioSC office: Prof. Dr. Ingar Janzik undertakes development and coordination of education measures

Since the spring of this year, Prof. Ingar Janzik has strengthened the team of the head office in the field of education. There was a break in the education activities as a result of the departure of Greta Mittweg. However, an NRW PhD Day in Bioeconomy and activities for networking of the BioSC doctoral students are now planned again for 2018. In addition, plans are underway for the next summer schools and the development of concepts to teach bioeconomy already to bachelor's and master's students as well as to professional people in the framework of life-long learning approaches. Overall, the topic networking of education activities in the field bioeconomy will be an important task at both the regional and international levels.

Ingar Janzik studied Biology in Bochum and graduated from the ETH Zürich. This was followed by a short post-doc stay at the Jülich Research Centre and a junior professorship at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Since 2008, according to the Jülich model, she has been professor in Green Biotechnology at the FH Aachen and scientist in IBG-2. Her research focus is the secondary metabolism of plants. In addition, she played a decisive role in the development of the doctoral program at the IGB-2 Institute and the upcoming doctoral student and supervisor platform, JuDocs, at the Jülich Research Centre. She has been member of the doctoral committee for 4 years.

New BioSC Core Group: Prof. Dr. Laura Hartmann, HHU Düsseldorf

Prof. Laura Hartmann heads the chair of Preparative Polymer Chemistry at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Macromolecular Chemistry of the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. Her research focuses on the synthesis, characterization and application of biomimetic and biofunctional polymers and materials.

With her group, Laura Hartmann is developing new synthesis strategies for the preparation of highly defined biofunctional polymers. She uses solid phase synthesis in combination with tailor-made components to receive monodisperse, sequence-defined macromolecules on an oligoamide basis. Particular attention is paid to the functionalization of polymers and materials with carbohydrate ligands and their interactions with bacteria and viruses.

Laura Hartmann graduated from the University Potsdam in 2007 after completing her doctoral thesis at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Golm. After that, she worked for two years at the Stanford University, California, as a post-doc in a project to develop an artificial cornea in collaboration with the chemical engineering group and the eye clinic. Back in Germany, she has headed an Emmy Noether junior research group at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Berlin since 2009 and habilitated in 2014 in the field of Macromolecular Chemistry at the Free University of Berlin. In 2014, she accepted a chair as W3 professor at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf.

New BioSC Core Group: Dr. Stephan Küppers, Forschungszentrum Jülich

he Central Institute for Engineering, Electronics and Analytics 3 – Analytics (ZEA-3) – in the Jülich Research Centre is developing methods of analysis and is applying these in the framework of relevant scientific challenges. The ZEA fields of competence include the structural elucidation of organic molecules, characterization of proteins and molecule-element interactions, imaging chemical analytics and diffusion process analyses in liquid and solid phases.

Dr. Pitter Huesgen and Dr. Sabine Willbold are members of the new core group under the leadership of Dr. Stephan Küppers.

Dr. Küppers studied chemistry at RWTH Aachen. Following a post-doc stay, he has worked at Schering AG in the drug development field for 10 years and has been head of the ZAE-3 since 2002. His scientific focus is on process and environmental analyses and process validation.

Together with his team “Analytics of molecular and biological systems” in the ZEA-3, Dr. Huesgen is developing mass spectrometry-based methods for structure elucidation and quantification of signal substances, metabolites and proteins in plants and bacteria. Supported since 2015 by an ERC starting grant, proteolytical processes in plant stress responses is the focus of their research. Dr. Huesgen completed his doctoral thesis in the Department for Physiology and Biochemistry of Plants at the University of Konstanz in 2007. Following a post-doc stay at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, he moved to Jülich in 2014.

With her group, Dr. Willbold is an NMR specialist conducting research in particular on the characterization of phosphorus-organic compounds in cells, plants and soils using ³¹P-NMR spectroscopy. Dr. Willbold studied Chemistry in Bayreuth and graduated there in the field of NMR spectroscopy of organometallic compounds in 1994. After post-docs at the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry of the University Bayreuth and the Institute for Biochemistry and Biophysics of the University of Jena, Dr. Willbold has been working at the ZEA-3 since 2002.