22nd September 2016 | 9:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Lindner Congress Hotel | Lütticher Straße 130 | 40547 Düsseldorf

How to manage the supply of a growing world population with high quality food? How can the requirements of a safe and economic raw material and energy production be fulfilled at the same time? To answer these and other important issues, the expertise of different research fields and scientific disciplines are needed. How does your own research topic contribute to the implementation of a sustainable bioeconomy?

Coworkers from the BioSC Project SPREAD are heading 6-weeks through the prairie of North America to find wild varieties of the perennial plant Silphium perfoliatum. Silphium is a very promising plant, e.g. for biomass production or secondary metabolites, but only a very limited number of species are available in Europe. Therefore, the scientists will bring seeds from various (wild) species to perfom cross breeding experiments.

On 21st of November, the first BioSC Sympoisum will take place in Cologne. Exiting insights into BioSC projects will provided, but also external speakers will present their recent results. Registration is open!

Dr. Nick Wiercks, RWTH Aachen, raised succesfully a 5-year funding for a research project within the ERA-NET framework "Industrial Biotechnology". The project "TRAFFIC" focuses on toxicity and transport in the fungal production of chemicals, which are relevant for industry, e.g. itaconic acid. Ustilago maydis will be used as a model organism.

Professor Ralf Pude of the university of Bonn is decisively involved in the development of an insulating material from natural resources and wins with the project High-capacity insulating plaster from renewable raw materials at the fourth idea market of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce Bonn / Rhine-Sieg among 50 founders and idea givers the audience award.

Hannah Schneider (IBG-2, FZ Jülich) was selcted to present her research approach at the Falling Walls Conference in November in Berlin. She convinced the jury with her approach to optimize and adjust root properties and thereby increase nutrient uptake. On the long eng, this would increase plant yield and therefore is an important contribution for worldwide food security.