9^th International BioSC Symposium "Bioeconomy - Circularity - Sustainability"
with Christian Patermann Award for Jeanette Klink-Lehmann and Marco Löhrer

The 9^th International BioSC Symposium was held at the LVR Landesmuseum in Bonn on November 24 and 25, 2025. Around 150 participants from academia, industry, politics and civil society joined the event that focused on the connections and links between bioeconomy, circularity and sustainability in the context of global and climate change. Welcome addresses were given by Thorsten Menne from the Ministry of Culture and Science NRW and Katja Frühwald-König, Co-Chair of the Bioeconomy Council NRW. Thorsten Menne presented the BioSC Christian Patermann Award 2025 for exceptional supervision of PhD students in the field of bioeconomy to Jeanette Klink-Lehmann (University of Bonn) and Marco Löhrer (RWTH Aachen University).

In Session I “Bioeconomy and circularity”, Thomas Müller-Kirschbaum presented the Circular Valley network that has successfully brought together a large number of stakeholders from companies, start-ups, science, politics and society in the Rhine-Ruhr region to enable and establish a circular economy. His keynote lecture was complemented by Regina Palkovits, who spoke about plastic recycling in the Catalaix research network, and Ralf Pude, who presented recyclable building and construction materials made from miscanthus.

In the first keynote of session II “Feeding resources into bioeconomy”, Daniela Jacob from the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS) analyzed how circular bioeconomy can offer opportunities to improve climate change adaptation and resilience, and emphasized sustainable agrifood systems with regeneration of ecosystems and conservation of biodiversity. In the second keynote, Juliane Merz from Evonik presented the Rheticus^© pilot process in which artificial photosynthesis is used to assimilate CO₂ as a feedstock for the production of chemicals. Finally, Holger Klose presented the challenges of using lignocellulosic biomass as raw material. The first day ended with a panel discussion with all three keynote speakers and a well-attended networking dinner.

On the morning of November 25, participants met again for Session III „Product and process design for sustainability“. Alexander Müller from TMG Think Tank for Sustainability gave the keynote lecture, outlining that the definitions and metrics currently used to measure economic success need to be revised in a way that economy is conceptualized as a subsystem of society embedded in the biosphere. Inga-Marie Lahrsen then presented examples of maximal valorization of biomass by producing H₂ and chemicals via photocatalytic dehydrogenation of bioethanol. Jörn Viell described the challenges and hurdles of upscaling bio-based production processes, and Frank Kolvenbach presented the PAPSTAR Solutions concept of manufacturing plant-based disposable tableware and processing it into biochar and terra preta after use.

Session IV “AI and Digitalization for Green Innovation“ started with a keynote given by Hugo Storm, University of Bonn, on the adoption and use of AI-based farming technology and the important role of research to support policy making. Marie Bolger gave insights into the use of AI for structural gene annotation and its advantages for bioeconomy such as the provision of gene annotation for non-model organisms. Stephan Schott-Verdugo and Berit Rothkranz reported on a process-stable carboligase for the synthesis of chiral amino alcohols as an example of computational enzyme engineering for the production of green platform chemicals.

In two poster sessions, a total of 43 posters on bioeconomy research topics were presented, three of which were honoured with the BioSC Poster Award: Kim Keilen (RWTH Aachen University), Tobias Morbe (Forschungszentrum Jülich) and Marvin Doser (RWTH Aachen University).

As in previous years, there was plenty of room for lively discussions, networking, and new insights. Thank you to everyone who supported and shaped this event—speakers, moderators, poster presenters, and the poster jury! he 10^th BioSC Symposium will be held on November 16-17, 2026, in Bonn.