10th PhD Day NRW "Future Bioeconomy"

From strange to sustainable: Rethinking Biological Applications

30^th October 2025 | 10:15 h - 16:30 h | Dorint Hotel, Düsseldorf

The 10^th anniversary of the PhD Day was again held in Neuss. Scientists from industry and Doctoral Researcher came together to discuss science and how innovation is driven in industry, along case studies in the according companies. An additional well-established part of our PhD day was the insight into the respective career pathways of the speakers.

Sonja Brandt (Ministry of Culture and Science, NRW) welcomed all students and emphasized the role of the bioeconomy for the region and its transformation and how from a starting point, when the BioSC was founded in 2010, since then so many regional initiatives were established, which were either part of the organizing institutions of the PhD-Day (e.g. BioökonomieRevier, AUFBRUCH), or represented in the speaker panel (Modellfabrik Papier).

Janina Meyer (Evonik) highlighted in her presentation that Evonik started their sustainability strategy already in the late 90s and explained it based on the emollient production. An important point was here, that industrial cooperation must fulfill the sustainability aspects, to guarantee it for the whole value chain and that stubbornness was important for success.
Mushrooms as novel food was the topic of the talk of Marianne Nassar (Infinite roots). She gave an interesting summary on the production strategy, for which they have been awarded the “German Sustainability Award 2026”. While the acceptance of products in regular test tasting was very high, a big hurdle for the market launch is the novel food regulation.
In the following holistic overview chances but also hurdles in the German economy for establishing innovation via founding a start-up or doing it within a bigger and established company were given by Timo Koch (Pfeifer& Langen).
After lunch Jihene Jerbi presented the approach of Modellfabrik Papier, which was founded by several paper producing companies, with the common goal to save energy and water during the paper production process, to remain competitive as a paper producer in Germany. And as the last speaker of the day, Philip Haida presented traceless and their naturally degradable and biobased production of single use cutlery orpackage materials, which can use a multitude of agricultural side streams as substrate.

To conclude the 10^th PhD day and a day of interesting talks and discussions, all speakers joined Prof. Ingar Janzik in a panel discussion about the hurdles for the implementation of the bioeconomy and their opinion on the factors of success for founding a start-up, but also about skills, which would help the Doctoral Researcher in their further career path.