News 2021

It is nothing but a little bit of RNA with a protein shell, and yet it has changed our world dramatically. And we begin realizing that it may never be just like before. But perhaps, that is a good thing, and an essential one for our world.
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Even he hadn’t expected Corona to still restrict his travels, but Nikolaus wouldn’t be Nikolaus if he didn’t find a way to visit us anyway.
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Today, a short review by Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher was accepted for publication in a special issue on biomaterials in the journal “Fungal Biology and Biotechnology”.
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International projects currently suffer from the travel restrictions imposed by the pandemics, so the consortium meeting of our BMBF-funded, Indo-German Bio-Fun project was again a virtual one. But despite the problems, both sides had excellent progress to report.
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Since twenty years, November 10 is World Science Day – perhaps more needed than ever in times of the climate crisis and the corona pandemic. Science offers powerful tools for describing the world, and they allow predictions about future developments. Scientific hypotheses evolve and mature by constantly being tested against reality in experiments trying to prove them wrong.
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Today, Dr. Dana Byrtusova from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) in Aas joined us for a two-month research stay in Münster.
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Today, Max Linhorst’s paper on the biotechnological derivatisation of chitosans using a recombinant chitin deacetylase acting in reverse was accepted for publication in the renowned journal “ACS Catalysis” of the American Chemical Society.
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Today, our alumna Dr. Rebecca Melcher received the Unternehmerinnenpreis 2021 – the Womens’ Entrepreneurial Award – of ‘Frauen (u)Unternehmen’, a network for female entrepreneurs and female executives with over 220 members.
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Today, Dr. Naivy Nava received the REACH thesis award for her doctoral thesis on chitosan-induced resistance in plants against nematodes.
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Today, we had the kick-off meeting for the foundation phase of the biotech start-up ‘greenCAP technologies’, financially supported by a start-up NRW transfer grant.
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Following the positive evaluation by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG, we today received the official granting letter of the Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen MKW for the purchase of a new mass spectrometer equipped with an ion mobility detector.
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Today finally, we had doctoral baptism again when Dr. Soofia Khanahmadi and Dr. Naivy Nava were thrown into the pond in our inner courtyard by their colleagues.
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Today, our group finally had another group excursion after no such event last year due to the pandemics.
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Today, Prof. Dr. Till Ischebeck started his Heisenberg professorship at our institute. He had been offered the Assistant Professorship in Plant Biotechnology with tenure track for the succession to Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher who will retire in 2025.
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Today, Katharina Ost successfully defended her Master thesis which involved an international collaboration with Prof. Arthur Ram of Leiden University in the Netherlands and Prof. Adrian Tsang from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.
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Today, Martin Bonin’s paper on the biochemical and bioinformatic characterisation of a chitin deacetylase from the fungus Aspergillus niger was accepted for publication in the renowned “Journal of Biological Chemistry”.
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Today, we were informed that based on Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher’s application, our recent doctoral graduate Dr. Naivy Nava was selected for the REACH Thesis Award for her doctoral thesis entitled „Biotechnological approaches of chitosan polymer and oligosaccharides to control the plant parasitic nematode, Meloidogyne incognita, and their mode of action in plant defense“.
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Today, we learned that our alumna Dr. Rebecca Melcher will be awarded the “Unternehmerinnenpreis Nord Westfalen ” – the “Womens’ Entrepreneurial Award North Westfalia”.
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Last month, our alumnae Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar and Dr. Carolin Richter had their pitch to defend their start-up proposal in front of the high-ranking start-up NRW transfer jury and today, they were informed their proposal was selected for funding!
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Today, Celina Vila-Sanjurjo successfully defended her doctoral thesis, at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
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The regular monthly Chitin & Chitosans webinar of the European Chitin Society had its third appearance today, again with two presentations.
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Today, a manuscript from our former doctoral candidates Roberta Paulert and Rebecca Melcher has finally been accepted for publication in the journal “Carbohydrate Polymers”.
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The Carbohydrate Bioengineering Meeting held every other year is one of the most relevant international meetings in our research area.
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Today, both Soofia Khanahmadi and Naivy Nava were officially awarded the title ‘Dr. rer. nat.’, the highly renowned German equivalent of the internationally more widespread ‘PhD’ in natural sciences.
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Today, a paper by Nazanin Noorifar and her colleagues from the group of Prof. Barry Scott at Massey University in New Zealand was accepted for publication in the journal “Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions”.
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Today, Naivy Nava successfully defended her doctoral thesis, supported by her committee members, including Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and two nematode specialists, Prof. Johannes Hallmann from the Julius Kühn Institut in Münster and Braunschweig and Prof. Eva Liebau from the Institute for Zoophysiology of our university.
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Today, our doctoral candidate Margareta Hellmann was informed that her application for a doctoral fellowship with the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes was granted!
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Niloofar Hamzelui, working as a member of the NRW graduate school on Green Electrochemical Energy Storage - GrEEn, won the Second Poster Prize at the annual international conference “Kaftwerk Batterie - Advanced Battery Power” which this year, naturally, was organized as a virtual meeting.
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Today at 11 am, the European Chitin Society EUCHIS launched its first Chitin & Chitosans webinar, in an attempt to close the communication gap between EUCHIS conferences caused by the pandemic.
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Today, Soofia Khanahmadi successfully defended her doctoral thesis, supported by her committee members Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, PD Dr. Gundula Noll from our institute, and Dr. Sybille Unsicker from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena.
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BIOspectrum, the joint journal of several German professional associations for biologists, covered our recent article in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology in its Journal Club.
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Recently, our doctoral alumna Roberta Paulert informed us about a video she had produced – together with other DAAD alumni - for the German Academic Exchange Council DAAD, reporting on her experience as a DAAD doctoral fellow in our lab.
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Today, the first paper of Dr. Maha Attjioui’s doctoral project was accepted for publication in the journal “Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions”, one of the highest ranking of the phytopathology journals.
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Today, the Norwegian-European bioeconomy R&D project BYPROVALUE had its late and virtual kick-off meeting.
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Today, our joint paper with the group of Prof. Regine Kahmann from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg was accepted for publication in the open access journal mBio of the American Society for Microbiology.
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Today, Sandra Lindner virtually defended her Master thesis, supported by her supervisors, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Dirk Prüfer from our institute.
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