The Impact of Biotechnology on the Economy of the Future
(Day 2 Opening: Dr Jessica Gallagher, Director, Global Engagement, UQ)
The University of Queensland (UQ) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) Bioeconomy Symposium of 2017 was hosted by UQ from 4th to 6th October 2017. This Symposium reflected on global interests in renewable biological resources, and explored challenges including food security, renewable energy and climate and environmental protection that are identified by the OECD and European Commission. The Symposium had four key session streams relative to: The application of biotechnology to food and health; Partnering for global impact – career development and mobility; Industrial biotechnology; and Biomass, metabolism and biocatalysis.
The first day of the UQ-TUM Bioeconomy Symposium featured a session on application of biotechnology to food and health, joined by scholars from TUM and UQ, while also featured presentations on: i) bioeconomy in Brazil from Prof Carlos Vergani, Chief of Staff at Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), during which he talked about the potential areas for collaboration among UQ, TUM and UNESP and ii) the current status and future potentials of Australia’s bioeconomy, by Mr Glenn Cross, the CEO of AusBiotech.
The second day provided a brilliant opportunity for early stage researchers and PhD students to learn about career development, the collaboration between UQ and TUM, and potential exchange programs between the two universities. Prof Alastair McEwen, Dean of Graduate School at UQ also hosted a session on career development, with early stage researchers and PhD students sharing their career stories and exchange experience. Prof Robert Henry, Director of Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) at UQ also gave a speech on food security and bioenergy in Australia.
During the second day of the Symposium, Tianchu Lu and Milton Aurelio Uba de Andrade Junior from the Research Group in Industrial Ecology and Circular Economy at School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at UQ did poster presentations on their researches. Respectively, their research topics are “Towards better life cycle approaches through combined use of system-based methodologies: a case study of interrelationships among environmental sustainability, food systems and diet”, which focuses on the use of system thinking on improving current practices and methods of life cycle assessments of food systems and diet; and “Exploring future scenarios of ethanol demand in Brazil and their land-use implications”, which highlights his recently obtained results on projections of ethanol demand and their implications on land-use. Having two top universities organizing a joint Bioeconomy symposium goes to show the importance of the theme in the current global scientific agenda”. – they said.
