Season Greeting from Bio4Energy. Collage and photos by Anna Strom ©2022.©AnnaStrom

Season’s Greetings from Bio4Energy

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Bio4Energy wants to wish its members and followers a

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

What have you got coming for 2023?

Bio4Energy has more research and development, a new course in the Bio4Energy Graduate School, as well as a continued aim for excellence and usefulness of results produced.

We hope that you will want to stay tuned!

Dimitris Athanassiadis, Bio4Energy Systems Analysis and Bioeconomy, is new coordinator of the Graduate School.©AnnaStrom

New Coordinator for Graduate School: Course Starts in 2024

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The Bio4Energy Graduate School, with flagship training on biorefinery demonstration and systems analysis of biomass resources, has a new coordinator.

Dimitris Athanassiadis of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) at Umeå is taking over from Sylvia Larsson, who has moved on to industry and is working at MoRe Research, Örnsköldsvik.

Athanassiadis is not only an associate professor, but also has longstanding experience of coordinating higher education initiatives and most recently a graduate school at his home organisation SLU.

“It feels like I have had a lot of practise already at the Faculty of Forest Sciences.

“You really can help PhD students—and at the same time Bio4Energy—with networking and [with shaping their] education… by providing them with information about courses they may not realise are available and giving access to each other”, he said.

Athanassiadis envisages creating short webinars, organising site visits to companies in the sector or even arranging seminars.

As for the generic courses of the Bio4Energy Graduate School, he is planning to launch new editions of both during 2024. Biorefinery Pilot Research will be given in spring and Systems’ Perspectives on Biomass Resources in autumn.

For advanced students interested in furthering their education with the research environment, he advises candidates to contact research leaders in Bio4Energy whose work remit corresponds to the candidate’s topical area of interest.

Open positions will be announced via Bio4Energy’s website, he adds.

Most plastics are made from petrochemicals. Could they be recycled using a bio-based process? Photo by ©Anna Strom.©Anna Strom

Recycling of Plastics and Forest Management Under Loup in New Projects

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While a part of the research community is trying to develop plastics from bio-based materials; as an alternative to petrochemicals; a group of Bio4Energy researchers are looking at how to reuse or recycle traditional plastic using bio-based processes. Two projects were granted last month, one by the national funders Swedish Research Council and more recently by Formas.

Here we acknowledge Bio4Energy researchers who won projects from Formas, in its annual round of grants.

  • Bioholistic: Developing integrated bioprocesses for a holistic chemical recycling of plastics, Leonidas Matsakas, Bio4Energy Biopolymers and Biochemical Conversion at Luleå University of Technology (LTU). Co-applicants at LTU are Alok Patel, Io Antonopoulou, Ulrika Rova and Paul Christakopoulos.
  • Browsing tolerant trees, Henrik Böhlenius, Bio4Energy Forest-based Feedstock at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). His collaboration partners are Stefan Jansson of Umeå University and Michelle Cleary of SLU.
  • Can the soil priming effect enhance plant growth under elevated CO2 by alleviating nutrient limitation? Sandra Jämtgård, Bio4Energy Environment and Nutrient Recycling at SLU. Her co-applicant is Oskar Franklin of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria.