The 7th NRW PhD Day on 20 October 2022 took place in Düsseldorf with around 50 participants from a wide range of disciplines and regional universities. The excellent presentations by the invited speakers gave the PhD students insights into companies, development processes, but also personal career paths and decisions. It became clear how far-reaching the relevance of the topic "Scaling in the bioeconomy," which was the focus of this year's PhD Day, is for science and business.

On 23 August, the International BioSC Symposium was held as a face-to-face event for the first time since 2019. Four lecture sessions with national and international speakers covered a broad spectrum of integrated bioeconomy research.

The BioSC organized the International Forum "Bioeconomy - a multidimensional concept in a world of change" on August 22, 2022 at the Bonner Universitätsforum on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Patermann, the "father" of the bioeconomy.

The „Transformation Monitor of the Bioeconomy 2022“ (in German), published on August 12, 2022, presents societal perspectives on the bioeconomy. The focus is on the opportunities and challenges of the transformation to a sustainable bioeconomy for various social groups, particularly in the Rheinische Revier region. The brochure bundles results from the BioSC FocusLab Transform2Bio, which is headed by Prof. Dr. Sandra Venghaus.

The fourth lecture "Meet the Circular Economy" focused on sustainable construction of the future. Prof. Sandra Venghaus welcomed Klaus Dosch, managing director of Rescore GmbH and head of the agency Faktor X, and Ivan Mallinowski, managing director of the company Containerwerk, who presented innovative concepts for determining resource efficiency and for using disused overseas containers as residential and office units.

The Bioeconomy Science Center has since 2014 granted the Supervision Award to young scientists among its members for outstanding achievements in supervising doctoral students. Since 2021, the €25,000 prize is awarded as the Christian Patermann Award and honors the founder of the knowledge-based bioeconomy in Europe. The namesake himself awarded this year's prize on May 11 jointly to Prof. Sandra Venghaus (RWTH Aachen/Forschungszentrum Jülich) and Dr. Till Tiso (RWTH Aachen).