Photo: Forschungszentrum Jülich, f.l.t.r. Ingar Janzik, Ulrich Schurr, Christian Patermann, Benedikt Wynands, Thorsten Menne

Christian Patermann Award 2024 for Benedikt Wynands

Since 2014, the Bioeconomy Science Center has honoured young scientists among its members with the Supervision Award for outstanding achievements in supervising doctoral students. Since 2021, the €25,000 prize has been awarded as the Christian Patermann Prize and honours the founder of the knowledge-based bioeconomy in Europe. The namesake was personally present at the presentation of the prize for 2024 at the 8th BioSC Symposium to Dr. Benedikt Wynands by Thorsten Menne, MKW NRW. The laudatory speech was held by Prof. Dr. Ingar Janzik.

Benedikt Wynands studied biology at RWTH Aachen University and received his doctorate summa cum laude from the Institute of Applied Microbiology at RWTH in 2019. During his PostDoc at IBG-1 Biotechnology, Forschungszentrum Jülich, he spent a guest stay at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, USA. Since 2021 he is senior postdoctoral researcher at IBG-1 in the department of Microbial Catalysis. His research focuses on microbial biotechnology, bio-upcycling of plastics, sustainable bioeconomy, metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. Since 2022 he leads the BioSC Boost Fund 2.0 project BioPlastiCycle.

Benedikt Wynands was nominated by current and former doctoral students from his and other groups as well as by his supervisor Prof. Dr. Nick Wierckx. A total of 18 individual letters of support were submitted. These highlighted his ability to collaborate across disciplines and his ambition to contribute to solving global problems, as well as his individual academic supervision of doctoral students, encouraging them to think outside the box. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Patermann was the first to congratulate after the presentation of the award by Thorsten Menne, MKW NRW.

Christian Patermann was Head of the Research Directorate at the European Commission from 1996 to 2007 and led the concept of a "Knowledge-based Bioeconomy (KBBE)", which the Commission first formulated in 2005. From autumn 2007 to 2014, he advised the North Rhine-Westphalian state government on the emerging future field of bioeconomy. From 2009 to 2012, he was a member of the first German Bioeconomy Council. He is the most important pioneer for the modern knowledge-based bioeconomy in Europe.