At the end of September 2010, the founding contract for the Bioeconomy Science Center was signed. RWTH Aachen University, the Universities of Bonn and Düsseldorf and Forschungszentrum Jülich established a cross-institutional and interdisciplinary cooperation in basic and applied research for the transformation to a sustainable bioeconomy, which is still unique today. Ten years later, the BioSC has developed into a renowned center of excellence for bioeconomy research in Germany and Europe, from which numerous contributions to solutions have been developed through integrative research projects and where cross-disciplinary educational approaches have been implemented.

Dr. Caspar Langenbach receives the Julius Kühn Prize in recognition of his work on the genetic and biological control of the Asian soybean rust fungus Phakopsora pachyrhizi.

What exactly does bioeconomy mean? And what can it contribute to the structural change in the Rheinische Revier? These and many other questions were the starting point for the first bioeconomy project course for pupils at Forschungszentrum Jülich. The course is part of the project "Rheinisches Revier - Jugend gestaltet den Strukturwandel".

On August 21, Federal Minister of Research Anja Karliczek visited the floating bio-economy exhibition at MS Wissenschaft in Cologne. Three exhibits were explained to the Minister in detail, including the exhibit "Clean water through algae" from the Bioeconomy Science Center and IBG-2 Plant Sciences, Forschungszentrum Jülich, which was presented by Dr. Holger Klose.

Dr. Vera D. Jäger was awarded the Excellence Prize of Forschungszentrum Jülich, together with two other young scientists. The prize is awarded for outstanding dissertations which have been largely conducted at Jülich, and is endowed with 5,000 Euro each. The dissertation dealt with the simple and cost-effective production of enzymes and with the sustainable production of hydrocarbons in archeae. Vera Jäger did her doctorate at the Institute for Molecular Enzyme Technology (HHU Düsseldorf), which is a member of the BioSC.

On 30 July, the MS Wissenschaft, which has been travelling for many years as an exhibition ship as part of the Science Years, took off in Münster. In the Science Year Bioeconomy, a joint exhibit of the Bioeconomy Science Center and IBG-2: Plant Sciences, Forschungszentrum Jülich, is on board. It illustrates how algae can be used to purify wastewater and recover valuable nutrients.