‘The rocky path from research to commercialisation of biosurfactants’ was impressively described by Wim Soetaert in the 34th BioSC Lecture on 12 September 2025. The BioSC Lecture was also a keynote lecture at the Biosurfactants Conference 2025 at RWTH Aachen University.

Around 22,000 visitors came to Forschungszentrum Jülich on 7 September to take a look inside the campus. BioSC was there with a large bioeconomy product exhibition and many current research results from ongoing projects.

For the fourth time in a row, the lecture series "Meet the Circular Economy" took place at RWTH Aachen University in the summer semester of 2025 under the direction of Prof. Dr. Sandra Venghaus, supported by the BioSC and others. The lecture series was followed for the second time by an Innovation Challenge, in which students developed proposed solutions for current challenges faced by the participating companies and industries and presented them to a jury on July 8.

At the opening of the new exhibition “The future grows back” in the Oecher Lab on 29 April, poetry slammer Oscar Malinowski spoke with BioSC members Prof. Dr. Andreas Jupke, process engineer at RWTH Aachen University, and Dr. Marcel Gaussmann, co-founder of the start-up re.solution. The entertaining talk focused on the prerequisites for the bioeconomy and the circular economy and the specific example of textile recycling. The combo of the RWTH BigBand provided musical support for the evening.

On April 1, the 11th BioSC Forum took place in the Central Library of Forschungszentrum Jülich. After an overview of the last 15 years of the BioSC as a bioeconomy research hub in NRW, long-term developments in the fields of bioplastics, fibers, functional molecules and process technologies were presented. In breakout sessions and a subsequent panel discussion, the relevance of bioeconomy research for societal challenges such as climate change was discussed. In the afternoon, new results from ongoing BioSC projects on a wide range of topics were presented. Extensive networking rounded off the successful day.

With the funding commitment of 5.83 million euros from the federal and state governments, the Rhenish mining area can continue on its way to becoming a model region for the bioeconomy. NRW Science Minister Ina Brandes and Dr. Mandy Pastohr, President of the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) as the responsible approval authority of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection officially launched the project in Merzenich-Bürgewald on February 24, 2025.