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 himself awarded this year's prize jointly to Prof. Sandra Venghaus (RWTH Aachen/Forschungszentrum Jülich) and Dr. Till Tiso (RWTH Aachen) on 11 May.
Sandra Venghaus studied Environmental Science and Public Policy at Harvard University and was a DFG fellow in the Interdisciplinary Environmental History Research Training Group at the University of Göttingen before she completed her doctorate at the University of Hanover's Institute of Marketing and Management in 2011. Further stations in her scientific career were the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, the University of Bielefeld and the Institute for Energy and Climate Research at the Research Centre Jülich, where she became group leader in the area of Systems Research and Technological Development in 2014. In 2021, she was appointed junior professor for Decision Analysis and Socio-Economic Assessment at RWTH Aachen University. Till Tiso studied bioprocess engineering at the University of Dortmund. From 2011 to 2016, he was a PhD student at the Institute of Applied Microbiology (IAMB) at RWTH Aachen University, with research stays at Imperial College London and CSIC Madrid, as well as international research collaborations in Canada, Brazil and South Korea, for example. After completing his doctorate, he became group leader at the IAMB in 2016. His research interests include synthetic biology, metabolic engineering and the recombinant production of secondary metabolites in various microorganisms.
Both award winners were nominated by doctoral students and the heads of their institutes. Prof. Ingar Janzik quoted several times from the personal letters of support in her laudation. The letters for Sandra Venghaus highlighted the composition of her team, with doctoral students from economics, political science, engineering and mathematics. This reflects the interdisciplinary approach required for research into the societal transformation to a sustainable bioeconomy. This is complemented by the exchange with international partners in order to not only overcome disciplinary boundaries, but also to think in a global context. In the letters of support for Till Tiso, the close cooperation with external partners from academia and industry in all doctoral projects was acknowledged, which led the doctoral students to work with experts from completely different fields - from process engineering to ecotoxicology and structural biology to social and economic sciences. He also supports the doctoral students in participating in interdisciplinary conferences, workshops and summer schools. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Patermann personally presented the award at this year's BioSC Forum.
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.
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