CLIB Team

Karl-Heinz Maurer is Chairman of the CLIB Board. In 2019, he co-founded the start-up Aachen Proteineers. From 2011 to 2019, Dr. Maurer was part of the Senior Leadership at AB Enzymes GmbH, where he held positions including Director of Business Development and Regulatory Affairs, Head of Global Business Organisation (Marketing and Sales), Director of Global Marketing, and Head of Regulatory Affairs and Special Projects. From 1986 to 2010, he worked in different positions in the Henkel organisation (including Cognis Biotechnology), starting in R & D Biotechnology, which he directed from 2000 to 2010 as Director Biotechnology (Corporate, later Laundry and Home Care division).

Karl-Heinz Maurer is a biochemist and microbiologist by training and received his doctorate from the University of Tübingen in 1994. He was co-founder and Chairman of the Board of the Industrieverbund Mikrobielle Genomforschung (now Industrieverbund Weiße Biotechnologie) until 2018. In 2009, he received an honorary professorship from the University of Greifswald.

Roland Breves currently is Head of Corporate Microbiology of Henkel AG & Co KGaA in Düsseldorf, which as a corporate function acts for all business units, including Cosmetics, Laundry and Home care and Adhesives. After studying chemistry and obtaining a PhD in microbiology (on chitinases from Streptomyces) in Hannover, he worked as a post-doc at the IPK Gatersleben on plant cell wall degrading enzymes.

After joining Henkel in 1997 (initially in COGNIS Biotechnologie GmbH), he was responsible as head of laboratory for the development and expression in Bacillus of detergent enzymes. In 2000, he joined the microbiology department as project leader „Smart Hygiene“. Topics were non-biocidal mechanisms against microbes and their negative impacts, e. g. malodour and biofilm formation, as well as prebiotic cosmetics. In addition to these explorative and classical microbiological topics, the department develops innovative concepts for biomaterials like adhesive bioconjugates.

Roland Breves is active in several national and international expert groups (DIN, CEN, DECHEMA, AISE).

Karl-Erich Jaeger received a Staatsexamen in biology and chemistry and a PhD in microbiology from Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany. In 1995, he obtained the venia legendi for microbiology with a habilitation thesis on bacterial lipases. Karl-Erich Jaeger is co-founder and served as Chairman of the Management Board and Member of the Scientific Advisory board of the biotech company evocatal GmbH (now evoxx technologies GmbH). In 2002, Karl-Erich Jaeger was appointed as Professor for Molecular Microbiology at the Department of Biology of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and director of the Institute of Molecular Enzyme Technology. In 2013, he was additionally appointed as director at the Institute of Bio- and Geosciences IBG-1: Biotechnology of the Helmholtz-Forschungszentrum Jülich.

His research interests focus on bacterial enzymes and fluorescent proteins, their biochemical and structural characterization as well as their biotechnological applications. He has published about 200 peer-reviewed papers, several textbook chapters, and a textbook; he is co-inventor on about 20 patents and member of various scientific organisations, editorial and advisory boards.

After his studies of law at the Universities of Bonn and Freiburg, Hans-Jürgen Mittelstaedt worked as an attorney in Düsseldorf from 1988 to 1992. In 1992, he joined the Association of the Chemical Industry (VCI) at the department of environmental legislation.

He held several positions in Frankfurt and Brussels before he became CEO of VCI NRW, the Association of the Chemical Industry in North Rhine-Westphalia. In this position, he is also CEO of BPI NRW, the Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Hans-Jürgen Mittelstaedt is one of the founding members of CLIB and has been holding a position in the extended board since the foundation of the cluster.

Prof. Ludo Diels, Dr. in chemistry & biotechnology, works at the University of Antwerp, and is ex senior advisor Sustainable Chemistry for the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) in Mol, Belgium. He is the chair of the Industrial Research and Innovation Agenda Group of the Public Private Partnership SPIRE/Processes4Planet (Sustainable Process Industry by Resource and Energy Efficiency/Circular and Climate Neutral Industry) bringing together 10 large industrial sectors (chemistry, steel, cement, minerals, non-ferro, engineering, ceramics, water, pulp & paper and refining) and he is member of the SPIRE-BBI JU working group.

He is strongly involved in the set-up of a biobased economy in Flanders and Europe, and the collaboration between Europe and India on bioeconomy and water business. He is also chair of the advisory board of the Shared Research Centre on Bio-aromatics (BIORIZON). He is founding father of the BIG-Cluster and the Vanguard Initiative on Interregional Smart Specialisation. He is also working on the combination of bio- and circular economy with a strong emphasis on the use of wood and wood residues (strong focus on lignin) for integrated applications in many sectors with a first focus on construction materials.

Thorsten Eggert is Managing Director of ERBER Enzymes GmbH in Dortmund, Germany, a company of the ERBER Group, headquartered in Getzersdorf, Austria. Since October 2020, the whole group is part of DSM. He studied biology at the Ruhr University Bochum and received his PhD at the Institute for Biology of Microorganisms in 2001. Subsequently, he established the Directed Evolution Research Group at the Institute for Molecular Enzyme Technology at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, which he headed until accomplishing his habilitation in molecular microbiology at the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf in 2007.

In 2006, Thorsten Eggert co-founded the company evocatal GmbH. As Managing Director (CEO), he developed evocatal, which was renamed into evoxx technologies in 2016, into a leading provider of enzymes for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries as well as the food and animal feed sector. In 2017, he achieved the company sale to the global enzyme manufacturer Advanced Enzymes Technologies Inc., India. Since 2019, Thorsten Eggert works for the ERBER-Group as part of DSM.

Kai Baldenius is a chemist by formation. After having received a PhD from Hamburg University, he spent a post-doc research year at The Scripps Research Institute, and then joined BASF in 1993. At BASF, Kai served in various positions in Research, Process Development, Production, Marketing & Sales. From 2009 to 2018 he led BASF’s Biocatalysis research group.

In September 2019, Kai has left BASF to become an independent consultant for applied biotechnology. Baldenius Biotech Consulting offers advice to venture capital and young start-ups for best technology positioning.

Dr. Stefanie Kesting is a top leader in finding & building up transformational businesses for companies which need to decarbonize their portfolio. Her track record covers more than 15 years of identifying sustainable businesses and making them scalable. She has founded and leads key global initiatives to transform industries into carbon-neutral strategies and businesses.

As Director Innovation at Uniper, she has been responsible for the identification and development of scalable new business for transformation since 2016. Since November 2017, Stefanie is the founding President of CO2 Value Europe, Europe’s key industrial Association dedicated to Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU). Stefanie is also a Member of the advisory Board of the Global CO2 Initiative, Michigan, USA, since its founding in 2018.

Between 2013 and 2016, Stefanie was part of the management team of Connecting Energies, a new E.ON company building sustainable B2B solutions business. Stefanie holds academic degrees in business & management (Dipl.-Kffr.) from the University of Cologne, and a PhD in Economics from International University Bremen.

Based on more than 30 years’ experience in chemical industry and bioeconomy, Manfred Kircher works on regional as well as international bioeconomy strategies. His career milestones are biotechnological research and development (Degussa AG, Germany), production (Fermas s.r.o.; Slovakia), venture capital (Burrill & Company, USA), biotechnology partnering, and branding (Evonik Industries AG, Germany) and building the bioeconomy cluster CLIB. He chairs the Advisory Board of CLIB (since 2014) and is Member of the Board of the bioeconomy association BioBall (bioeconomy in a metropolitan region; since 2019). In 2020, he has been appointed to the Advisory Board for Sustainable Bioeconomy of the State Government of Baden-Württemberg and as Chairman of the Organics Valorisation Section of the European Federation of Biotechnology (EFB). Manfred is owner of KADIB, a company consulting on important aspects of industrial bioeconomy.

Christian Patermann studied Law, Economics, and Languages in Germany, Switzerland, and Spain and completed his doctoral thesis in law at the University of Bonn in 1969. He entered the German public service in 1971 by joining the Federal Ministry of Science and Education.

From 1974 to 1978, he was Science Counsellor at the German Embassy in Washington D.C., USA. He then returned to the Ministry of Research and Technology, where he held many positions in Germany and in international organisations, like ESA, ESO, and EMBL. In 1996, he joined the European Commission, DG Research and Technology and was appointed Director for Environment and Sustainability.

In January 2004, he was named Programme Director for Biotechnology, Agriculture & Food Research, where he was responsible for launching the Knowledge based Bioeconomy in the European Commission. He also served for four years as co-chair in the EC-US Task Force Life Sciences and Biotechnology Research. He retired in 2007 but remains active in advising public and private institutions and companies on European affairs and the Bioeconomy. He was a member of the 1st German Bioeconomy Council from 2009 – 2012 and has been strongly involved in the preparation and implementation of the Global Bioeconomy Summits in Berlin in 2015, 2018 and 2020.