The third NRW-wide Doctoral Students Day, this time on the subject “Future Bioeconomy” with around 70 participants at the Lindner Congress Hotel Düsseldorf, was again a great success. The main focus was perception and representation of the bioeconomy in industry. Following keynote speeches in the morning, there was opportunity for direct and intensive exchange between representatives of bioeconomy-oriented companies and doctoral students within small groups in the afternoon.

The fourth event in the “BioSC Spotlight“ series took place in Aachen on October 29, 2018. Scientists from academia and industry held a total of eight specialist lectures. The 47 participants took the opportunity for intensive discussion.

Purification and recycling of agriculturally used water is an issue that is receiving more and more attention. Algae can accumulate large quantities of nitrate or phosphate, for example, and thus have the potential to clean agricultural effluents as well as to be used as nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers. A BioSC workshop on this topic with international participation took place at Forschungszentrum Jülich on September 6 and 7, 2018.

From June 26 to July 9, Prof. Gregory LeFevre, University of Iowa, stayed in the Core Group of Prof. Ulrich Schwaneberg, RWTH Aachen. Main topics of his research are biotransformations in relation to the impact and fate of various contaminants in the environment.

On 15th May, industry leaders and junior scientists were invited together to a one-day symposium. The event focussed on the research areas “Antibiotics research” and “Plant innovation”.

The bioeconomy has yet to be appropriately included in international fora on innovation, climate, biodiversity and sustainable development policy. Therefore, bioeconomy needs its own independent global forum. This is what the 700 participants agreed upon at the second Global Bioeconomy Summit 2018 in Berlin.