On 24 May, the German Bioeconomy Council handed over its recommendations for the implementation of the National Bioeconomy Strategy to State Secretaries Judith Pirscher (BMBF) and Silvia Bender (BMEL). Recommendations include, for example, sustainable land use, measures and innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a turnaround in raw material consumption and the creation of reliable framework conditions for sustainable innovations in the field of the bioeconomy.

Around one hundred BioSC members gathered on May 17, 2023 for the ninth BioSC Forum, the annual internal retreat, to exchange information about developments in the past year and new research results. In addition to the presentation of all running projects within the NRW BioSC strategy project, there were presentations on successful further developments from previous BioSC projects as well as an overview of BioSC initiatives in the field of education and early career.Moreover the new members had the opportunity to introduce themselves in pitches and thus strengthen their networking in the BioSC.

At the MittelstandsMAKERTHON NRW from 9 to 11 May 2023, co-organised by the BioSC, interdisciplinary student teams developed surprising, creative and above all professional solutions for current entrepreneurial challenges. The winning team convinced with an almost market-ready approach for the production of customised and highly stable shipping materials made of paper.

After much interest last year, the public lecture series "Meet the Cicular Economy - Sustainability in Practice", co-organised by the BioSC, has started for the second time at RWTH Aachen University. At the first event on 24 April, the company Covestro, among others, presented its approaches to sustainable production. Six further dates will take place in May and June.

A new Sonderforschungsbereich is being funded at HHU Düsseldorf for the next four years, focusing on communities of microorganisms. Cooperation partners are Forschungszentrum Jülich, RWTH Aachen University, the Universities of Bielefeld and Cologne and the MPI for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne. 15 of the 29 project leaders are members of the BioSC, where a large part of the necessary collaborations have been initiated.

Homepage of SFB 1535 „Microbial networking – from organelles to cross-kingdom communities“

Since September 2019, the FocusLab Transform2Bio analysed the regional characteristics and strengths of the Rheinische Revier, developed possible transformation paths towards a sustainable bioeconomy and investigated how divergent interests of different social groups can be brought together. On 1 December 2022, the final workshop took place at Forschungszentrum Jülich.