News / Dates

From 28 September 2026–2 October 2026, the “20th Brazilian Meeting on Organic Synthesis (BMOS)” took place in Águas de Lindóia, in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. The international conference addressed current developments in organic synthesis. A particular focus this year was on the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in chemical research.

Supported by the Brazilian Chemical Society and organised jointly with the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), the conference brought together numerous scientists from Brazil and abroad.…

We would like to extend a warm welcome to Jana Zühlke and Rene Heinrich to our institute. The chemistry students from RWTH Aachen University are joining us for a six-week research internship and will be working alongside our doctoral researchers, Catharina and Elias, in the laboratory.

Jana and Rene, we are delighted that you have found your way to us and wish you an exciting and informative time here.

On 1–2 October, the SusChem Conference took place, organised every two years by the GDCh’s Sustainable Chemistry Division. It brings together national and international scientists to discuss current research and jointly develop perspectives for a sustainable future for the chemical industry.

The programme covered a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from biomass as a source of raw materials and biotechnology, through catalysis and electrochemistry, to the circular economy and life cycle assessment.

Many of these topics are directly linked to…

On 6 October 2026, the winning entries in this year’s pART of Research calendar competition organised by HHU were announced. We are delighted that our institute will once again be featured in the new calendar with one of our photographs!

Under the title “A Planet in a Flask”, Nina Stadler and Andreas Klein submitted a photograph of a crystallised natural substance. What at first glance resembles a rugged, almost alien mountain landscape is in fact a chemical substance in a laboratory flask. The image impressively demonstrates just how…

We would like to extend a very warm welcome to Laura Dodel and Aria Alptekin.

The two business chemists began their bachelor theses last week under the supervision of our doctoral researchers Daniel Germes and Marc Tackmann.

Dear Laura, dear Aria, we are delighted that you will be spending the coming months with us at the institute, and we wish you every success and enjoyment with your final theses.

NordBio-III, entitled ‘Biocatalysis in the Nordics’, took place from 24 to 25 September 2026 at the IDA Conference Centre in Copenhagen. The conference covered a range of key topics – from biocatalysis and sustainability to data science and automation – bringing together scientists, industry representatives and early-career researchers from across Scandinavia, Europe and beyond.

Our PhD student Viktoria Warth presented her latest findings in a poster and once again won one of the coveted poster prizes. Congratulations, Viktoria! We are…

This month we are delighted to welcome a visiting PhD student from Italy: Matteo Corti. He will be working at our institute until February and, like our PhD student Simon Przetak, will be working with prenyltransferases. We are confident that both will benefit from an intensive and fruitful exchange of ideas.

Matteo studied biotechnology in Milan and is currently working on his PhD in Prof. S. Dallavalle’s research group. We are delighted to have him here in Jülich and wish him a productive and inspiring time with us.

Welcome to Jülich,…

On 4 and 11 September, our five Bachelor’s students presented their theses as part of the IBOC seminar. The range of topics was very diverse and fascinating: from papers on current natural products projects, through biaryl constructions, to enzymatic allylations. The students achieved excellent results in all these projects.

Congratulations and a big thank you to the graduates

Philipp Maximilian Huppatz, Tim Leipertz, Fabian Meding, Esther Phillipps and Leonardo Reckziegel for their dedicated work and valuable support of our research.

We are…

The German Chemical Society (GDCh) has awarded our alumna Dr Mona Haase the GDCh Prize for Biocatalysis. The award ceremony will take place on 1 October 2026 in Dortmund as part of GDCh-SusChem 2026, the annual conference of the GDCh’s Sustainable Chemistry Division.

Mona Haase completed her PhD at our institute with the distinction ‘summa cum laude’ and, in her thesis, developed a novel chemo-enzymatic synthetic route for the pyrroloindole alkaloid Lansai B. Through the specific use of C-methyltransferases, she was able to establish an…

During the week of 23–27 August, our colleague Viktoria Warth attended Biocat 2026 in Hamburg. The conference focused on plastic degradation – particularly of polyurethane – and AI-supported prediction tools.

As part of the programme, our colleague Stephan Thies from IBG-1 gave a talk on polyurethanases and nylonases, and further fascinating presentations were delivered by Stephan Lutz (Codexis) and Uwe Bornscheuer.

Viktoria presented her poster on the topic “Towards Efficient Identification of Amidas: Development of a Screening Platform” and…