CKB expands and deepens network at the CIC2020

Biotechnology and bio-economy innovations have great potential to transform our fossil-based economy to a more sustainable and circular one. Bringing these innovations from the lab to the market remains to be a great challenge. The CLIB Competence Center Biotechnology (CKB) aims at reducing these hurdles and speeding up the time to market by integrating multiple steps of process and product development.
For the project partners, the annual conference of the Cluster Industrial Biotechnology (CLIB) on 06 and 07 February was a great opportunity to present and discuss results and to network with academia and industry.
During the CLIB International Conference (CIC 2020), Prof. Dr. Marco Oldiges, Head of Department Bioprocesses and Bioanalytics at the IGB-1: Biotechnology at the Forschungszentrum Jülich and one of the project leaders in CKB, demonstrated in his talk how digitalisation can help to speed up bioprocess development. All four CKB competence centers of the Bielefeld University, the Technical University Dortmund, the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and the Forschungszentrum Jülich participated in the conference and used the opportunity to meet members of CKB’s industrial advisory board, the IP board and the multinational and multisectoral network of CLIB.
The project’s potential was even mentioned by Prof. Dr. Pinkwart, minister of economic affairs, digitalization and energy of NRW, who stressed the need for a faster market entry. He also mentioned the CKB as one of the projects tackling this challenge.
More information on CKB and its aims in developing processes and products for a technology transfer into industry within the megatrends resource efficiency, raw materials, and health can be found at the home page https://ckb.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de.