Scottish Fermentation Network holds their 12th edition

The Scottish Fermentation Network (SFN) held a joint meeting with the IChemE’s Biochemical Engineering Special Interest Group (BESIG) at Strathclyde university’s Technology & Innovation Centre in early November. Passionate networking and talks across academia and industry took place around the theme of “Biobased Chemicals production – towards a fossil-free future”.

BESIG is a group that can be joined and acts as an international forum for the technical and professional development of biochemical engineering for industrial practitioners, academics and students.  They also can award bursaries for ECR’s for travel and communicating research.

The event opened with a fantastic keynote talk from The University of Edinburgh's Jo Sadler. 

Session 2 featured several early career researchers, PhD student Rhona Cowan (Edinburgh university), Harry Newton (Nottingham university), Liam Forbes(Glasgow university), who discussed dark autotrophs as an alternative protein, Keratinases; a combined colourmetric screen and fermentation scale-up for the valorisation of wool, and sustainable biochemical production by applying optogentics in photosynthetic bacteria.

A third session chaired by Alicjia Zimmer from Getinge then featured several companies with talks from Ellis Robb from Ingenza, whose talk centred around researching towards a sustainable planet, Charlotte Green, Colorifix, who discussed scale-up solutions for a bright, green future, Edward Green from NCIMB, who talked on harnessing the power of microbes to build a sustainable bioecnomy, Samuel Casasola Zamora of Green Bioactives, who talked about expanding the potential of plant cell culture for the sustainable production of bio-based chemicals, and Catherine Hill (MiAlgae), who addresssed challenges in the scale-up of novel bio-based production methods.

No SFN event would be complete without a 'fermentation related activity' and attendees were treated to a guided tasting at Glasgow’s WEST Brewery. 

Huge thanks to our sponsors, without which it wouldn't have been possible GPE Scientific Ltd, JULABO GmbH, Broadley-James Corporation, Getinge and IBioIC.

The event was planned and coordinated by a joint committee James Winterburn(Manchester university/Holiferm), Glenn Robinson, Alicja Zimmer (Getinge), Luke Johnston (UoE), Neil Renault and Lorna Watt (IBioIC).