Our first plenary lecture at the ESBES 2024 symposium (www.esbes2024.org) will not have one but two speakers!

Professor Anna Heins (Hamburg University of Technology) and professor Alexander Grünberger (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)) will deliver a joint talk titled “Phenotypical heterogeneity in bioprocesses: better think positive!?”

Anna Heins is expert in studying heterogeneity in bioreactors and populations of microorganisms. She holds an MSc degree from the Technische Universität Braunschweig, and a PhD degree from DTU – Technical University of Denmark. Anna Heins has worked as a postdoc at Technical University of Munich, and has in 2023 taken up a professor position at Hamburg University of Technology at the Institute of Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering.
Alexander Grünberger is expert in the application of microfluidics in a bioprocess engineering context. He holds an MSc degree from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and a PhD degree from RWTH Aachen University. He has been a junior professor at Universität Bielefeld, as has since 2022 been full professor at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

The second plenary lecture at the ESBES 2024 symposium (www.esbes2024.org) will be given by Professor Selin Kara. The lecture is titled “Intensification of biocatalytic processes towards industrial volumetric productivities”.

Professor Selin Kara holds MSc and PhD degrees from Hamburg University of Technology. As a postdoc, she has worked at Delft University of Technology. She currently is a full professor and head of the Institute of Technical Chemistry at Leibniz Universität Hannover, and also holds a professorship at the Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering at Aarhus University.

A third plenary lecture at the ESBES 2024 symposium will be given by professor Kirsi S. Mikkonen from the University of Helsinki. The tentative title of the presentation is “Added value from reconstructed biomass fractions: Tackling lignin particle aggregation through hemicellulose- and laccase-assisted bioprocess”.

The research of Kirsi S. Mikkonen has focus on valorization of biomass streams, particularly hemicelluloses derived from wood and agricultural residues as well as fungal biomass. Kirsi holds a PhD degree from the University of Helsinki, and has been appointed full professor at the University of Helsinki (Department of Food and Nutrition) in 2023. She currently holds an ERC Consolidator grant.