EBU Coordination Group and European Bioeconomy Conference 2022 in Brussels

Last week the EBU coordination group met in Brussels ahead of the European Bioeconomy Conference 2022. We had the pleasure of being hosted at the same location, where in 2019 the EBU was founded, the European Liaison Office of the German Research Organisations (KoWi).

A key focus of the meeting were the details for the next presidents’ meeting in November and how to pave the way for the next chapter of the EBU under a new leadership. With several projects ongoing (e.g. FOEBE, EBU Label, BIObec), new proposals being submitted and new projects starting, the Coordination Group meeting was also the opportunity to review all activities undertaken within the framework of the EBU. An example is the Startup Village Initiative from the EU Commission, that the EBU has started participating along with 5 other university alliances.

The next day CG members participated in the 2022 European Bioeconomy Conference, where the EBU’s current speaker Professor Iris Lewandowski was featured as a keynote speaker on the topic “Youth engagement in the bioeconomy: preparing the next generation through education and skills”.

The Conference saw the new Bioeconomy Youth Ambassadors take the stage to introduce the various topics of the conference. Among the Youth Ambassadors are also two students from the EBU partners:

Ugne Dirdate from Wageningen University and Research, a participant in last year’s FOEBE project, talked about the financial challenges for the Bioeconomy (left).

And Daryna Zaitseva, a graduate from the Bioeconomy Master at the University of Hohenheim, who suggested a European Bioeconomy day (right).