The TUM Liaison Office São Paulo brought the year 2020 to a close with a successful event on the hot topic of bioeconomy in Latin America. Together with professors from TUM and its partners from Colombia and Brazil, the online event brought around 100 participants closer to the topic and built bridges to local value chains and TUM projects in Latin America.
Coffee as an important part of the Colombian value chain in the bioeconomy – presentation by Prof. Muñoz Mora (EAFIT). Screenshot: TUM São Paulo
For the first time, the TUM São Paulo office hosted an event as part of the TUM Global Dialogue Series and attracted a large number of participants right from the start: More than 100 interested scientists, students and representatives from industry and the private sector attended the online seminar live on December 15.
The liaison officer moderated the event and introduced the liaison office as an anchor point for those interested in cooperating with TUM or Latin American partners.
TUM presentations by Professor Johannes Sauer (TUM School of Life Sciences) on a cooperation project with Colombia in the field of Smart Agriculture (NetCSA), by Professor Volker Sieber (Campus Straubing) on the Global Bioeconomy Alliance and by Professor Magnus Fröhling (Campus Straubing) on cooperations of TUM with South America in the field of bioeconomy informed the participants about the variety of already existing projects of TUM with Latin America.
Participants from Germany, North and South America, as well as Asia
TUM Campus Straubing Rector Prof. Sieber presents the Global Bioeconomy Alliance. Screenshot: TUM São Paulo
About half of the participants tuned in from Germany and were particularly interested in the presentations of the Latin American speakers. Professor Muñoz Mora (EAFIT) spoke about the importance of the bioeconomy in Colombia and Professor Bacci (UNESP) explained the implementation of the Brazilian internationalization program PrInt and its possibilities to support global alliances using UNESP as an example.
The other 50% of the participants were from South America (Colombia, Brazil, Central America and others) and from some Asian countries such as India, Singapore and the Philippines, as well as from North America. This regional diversity of participants clearly highlights an important advantage of digital events, which allow to bring together a much larger and more heterogeneous group on a given topic in a straightforward way.
The main topic of interest was the circular economy
Surveys within the online seminar show that participants are particularly interested in the topic of circular economy (38%), natural products follows in second place as the main interest of 22% of respondents, biobased materials occupies third place with 17% and the area of bioenergy and bioprocesses was of primary interest to 14% and 9% respectively of those connected.
The final lively panel discussion once again highlighted the great interest of the participants in the topic, who asked numerous questions. The questioners were particularly interested in finding out details about the projects presented and how they could cooperate with the scientists involved.
After the very positive response of the participants to this first TUM Global Dialogue Event, the series will be continued in 2021 with new, interesting topics. For more information, please visit the TUM São Paulo Website and our LinkedIn page in the first semester of 2021.