PROMICON at the PhD Workshop: ‘Towards a Sustainable Bioeconomy’

A PhD Workshop by the title ‘Towards a Sustainable Bioeconomy’ took place on 16 and 17 November 2022 in Leipzig, Germany. The event was jointly organised by PROMICON’s partners at UFZ and the six other Helmholtz Centres of the Research Field "Earth and Environment" (FZJ, KIT, GFZ, GEOMAR, GMbH and AWI), as part of the "Changing Earth - Sustaining our Future" program.

Climate change, the extinction of species, environmental pollution, and geological risks are among the greatest challenges of our time. In the initiative "Changing Earth - Sustaining our Future", the seven Helmholtz Centres are researching our natural environment in the span of seven years (2021 - 2027) – from the land surface and the oceans to the most remote polar regions. The research areas in the program are organized into nine topics as well as numerous cross-cutting activities and alliances. 

Sustainable bioeconomy and intact circular economy are a few of the key topics that will shape our future. Therefore, they are the main focus in the ‘Sustainable bioeconomy – harnessing the potential of nature’ panel - topic 7 in the program. The topic aims to develop practical solutions and technologies for these systems that farmers can use to protect the environment and at the same time produce sufficient yields from their fields. 

The goals of year's Topic 7 PhD Workshop “Towards a sustainable Bioeconomy” were:

• to facilitate an exchange,

• the establishment of new contacts and

• the development of collaborations within Topic 7 - Towards a Sustainable Bioeconomy in the current PoF program Changing Earth – Sustaining our Future.

The workshop took place in the Leipziger KUBUS and the main part of the event was dedicated to three poster sessions. The posters were thematically grouped to facilitate bringing together students with similar interests: ‘Process engineering and development’, ‘Modeling, simulation and data science’, ‘Microbes, microbial communities and plant cells’, ‘Agro-Ecosystems, food production and plant-based technologies’.

PROMICON partners Hannah Berreth and Katja Bühler of UFZ presented their co-created poster taking part in the ‘Microbes, microbial communities and plant cells’ themed poster session. They showcased their research and findings regarding the hydrogen production in Rhodopseudomonas palustris dominated biofilm consortia.

Photo: A photo by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research for the program „Changing Earth – Sustaining our Future”.