BIOTECHNICA FORUM 2019: Opportunities and Challenges in Life Sciences

Running on all three days of LABVOLUTION, the European fair for innovative lab technology, the BIOTECHNICA FORUM will serve as a life sciences networking platform for research and industry. On Thursday, this established forum will also serve as a networking hub for anyone interested in careers and jobs in the life sciences (Hall 20/Stand D30).

"With the BIOTECHNICA FORUM, the LABVOLUTION is one of the highlights of this special year for biotechnology," said Dr. Viola Bronsema, Managing Director of Bio Deutschland. "We celebrate 100 years of biotechnology in 2019. And we are not only looking back at history, but also highlighting the opportunities that this key technology offers a century after its first mention for current challenges in a wide variety of areas". The milestones in the history of biotechnology will be presented on an exhibition wall during the LABVOLUTION.

BIOTECHNICA FORUM at LABVOLUTION starts on Tuesday, 21 May, at 10:00 a.m., with the spotlight on optogenetics. The Hannover-based PhotonicNet4Lab, plus the Lower Saxony BioRegioN Network Life Sciences and the Hannover Laser Center will jointly cover the future application fields for optogenetics and further technologies and tools that can be applied to optogenetics.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the time slot beginning at 12 noon is reserved for the Life Science Spotlight Forum put on by the Diagnostica Industry Association. “(R)Evolution of People through Life Sciences” is the theme of the daily two-hour program. The Life Science Spotlight Forum will highlight the benefits of the life sciences for society, featuring talks on life science innovations. The focus will be on the latest research findings involving regenerative medicine, next generation sequencing, biosimilars, biomaterials and Crispr/Cas.

On the first two days of the fair from 2:00 p.m. onward, the focus will be on individualized, personalized medicine. The Lower Saxony BioRegioN Life Sciences Network and the Lower Saxony Innovations Center as well as the Center for Pharmaceutical Process Engineering will speak at the BIOTECHNICA FORUM on how technological developments in recent years have made possible the development of medicine tailored to the needs of the individual, as well as the challenges this creates for drug development and production.

The green technology research group WGG will open the forum on Wednesday, 22 May at 10:00 a.m., discussing the topic “Genome Editing: meet future challenges with innovative technology” The symposium will provide an overview of the type and application of genome editing, exploring its potential and applications on the basis of examples from research. Following the daily Life Science Spotlight Forum, the BIO.NRW cluster will present the North Rhine-Westphalia BioRegions at 2:00 p.m., focusing on innovative rapid analytics and diagnostics for established as well as new markets. The spotlight is on rapid diagnostics and analytics for different molecular targets and broad fields of application, from medicine to food safety.

Finally, Thursday is Career Day at the BIOTECHNICA FORUM. At 10:00 a.m. the jobvector career portal will kick things off with a presentation on questions like: Which job best suits me? What employer fits my personal profile? And which industries are open to me? This will be followed by a presentation from the academics career consultants covering life science career profiles in research and industry. At 2:00 p.m. – following the Life Science Spotlight Forum – academics will additionally offer an interactive science communication format, with the “Plötzlich Wissen!” group bringing their program “From the lab to the world”, devoted to the topic of the seas and oceans, to the stage.

Keep an eye out for more news from next week’s event in Hannover, Germany, on SelectScience.

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