News

“Start-up Contacts” is organized by the “Venture Club Münster”, a large local student-initiative for start-ups and innovation organizing this annual fair since 2023 under the motto “Vision Becomes Venture”.
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The “MS-Wissenschaft” is a ormer freight ship turned into an exhibition ship for science, particularly addressing the pupils and non-expert interested visitors.
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This week, Prof. Moerschbacher was invited again to give a general lecture on “Chitins and Chitosans – Analysis and Applications” at the famous European Glycosciences Summer School which was organized this year in Groningen, the Netherlands.
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From May 12-14, Margareta Hellmann visited the first "INSECTSplus" conference, jointly organized by the German Institute of Food Technologies (DIL) and the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy (ATB). 
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Today, Margareta “Maggi” Hellmann finalized her doctoral voyage with presenting it in three minutes to her guests and those of her twelve fellow doctoral candidates. Not an easy task given that her thesis contained nine manuscripts on almost 400 pages.
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Today, after a long time, another young researcher from our group received her doctoral degree: along with 15 other young Doctors, Mounashree Student took the oath, pledging to “strive at all times to preserve the doctoral title from every blemish, prove herself worthy of this title in all future academic endeavours, and to always seek and uphold academic truth to the best of her knowledge and belief”.
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Today, Sirikan ‘Gundum’ Pongnan, a doctoral candidate from the Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology (VISTEC) in Pa Yup Nai, Thailand, presented her project for her sandwich year in our research group.
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Today, a paper by Prof. Jogi Madhuprakash from the University of Hyderabad, to which Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr from our group contributed his analytical expertise, has been accepted for publication in the renowned journal “Carbohydrate Polymers”.
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Today, Margareta Hellmann successfully defended her doctoral thesis on the “Influence of cell wall modification by chitin deacetylases in Cryptococcus neoformans on the human immune response” in front of her doctoral committee, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, PD Christian Gorzelanny from the Institute of Dermatology and Venerology of the University Hospital Eppendorf in Hamburg, and Prof. Alexander Weber from the Institute of Immunology at the University of Tübingen.
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At the beginning of this week, this year’s annual retreat of the DFG Priority Programme on Chitin, Chitosan and Chito-Oligosaccharides and Their Interactions with Proteins of the Extracellular Matrix and Cellular Signaling – CodeX – was held in Münster.
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Today, another manuscript that has been really long in the making has been accepted for publication in the renowned International Journal of Biological Macromolecules.
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Today, another of the manuscripts in Margareta Hellmann’s doctoral thesis has been accepted for publication in the renowned journal Frontiers in Immunology.
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Today, Mounashree Student defended her doctoral thesis entitled “Ustilago maydis chitin deacetylases – A story of specificity and redundancy” supported by her ‘Doktorvater’ Bruno Moerschbacher and the two other members of her doctoral committee, Prof. Volha Shapaval from Norway and Prof. Jenny Lodge from the US. Prof.
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Today, the first paper originating from Katharina Ost’s doctoral project on engineering the fungus Aspergillus niger for optimized protein production has been accepted for publication in the renowned journal The Cell Surface.
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And again! Yet another of Margareta Hellmann’s manuscripts has been accepted for publication today, in the journal SoftwareX.
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Today, another of the manuscripts which are part of Margareta Hellmann’s doctoral thesis has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules.
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Tim Zemlicka interviewed the AgriBluBio team for the December issue of “Wissen – Leben”, the monthly Newsletter of the University of Münster.
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This being the last Christmas season in which Bruno Moerschbacher is full professor (“ordentlicher Professor” in German – Can you believe it? Have you ever seen his office?), this year has seen our last full Christmas party.
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It is amazing, but this morning, half a year before our group formally ends with the retirement of Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, we again found almost 30 Nikoläuse in our small seminar room.
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Last week, Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr and Margareta Hellmann participated in the 20th Annual International Conference on Polysaccharides and Glycoscience (ICPG) in Prague, Czech Republic.
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Again, Anne and Philipp, the will-be founders of our start-up AgriBluBio, won a shared First Prize in the pitch contest of the REACH - EUREGIO Start-up Center of our University last week. Thus, tickets for next year’s participation at Enschede Slush’D are already secured. And yesterday, they also won a shared First Prize in the much tougher competition during the Sciene-to-Startup Convention in Münster, where they also won the Audience Award!
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Today, Dr. Carolin Richter’s manuscript on the biotechnological optimisation of bioactive chitosans for sustainable agriculture was finally accepted in the highly reputed journal Carbohydrate Polymers.
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Today, the doctoral candidates of the Structured Doctoral Programme BioSciences of the Faculty of Biology at our University of Münster held their third annual Poster Symposium.
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Today, the Code𝛘 Mercator fellow Prof. Francisco Goycoolea from the University of Murcia in Spain and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher visited Prof. Hans Merzendorfer and his team at the University of Siegen, to discuss a joint research project they are planning in collaboration with Dr. Martina Delbianco from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam.
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Today, the review on chitin deacetylases written by Sandra Lindner, Margareta Hellmann, and Dr. Martin Bonin supported by Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher has been accepted for publication in the highly renowned journal Carbohydrate Polymers.
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Today, Dr. Anne Vortkamp, Dr. Philipp Lemke, and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher visited the Dutch daughter satellite event of the famous Helsinki Start-up Fair “Slush”, “the most founder-focused event on Earth” according to their website.
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Our doctoral candidate Katharina Eickelpasch visited the first Code𝛘 Summer School on “Light and Electron Microscopy” supervised by Dr. Luca Bertinetti from the Center for Molecular Bioengineering at TU Dresden.
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Today, Margareta Hellmann’s paper describing her surprising observation of an unexpectedly regular distribution of acetyl groups in typical commercial chitosans was accepted for publication in the renowned journal “Nature Communications”.
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Today, Dr. Anne Vortkamp, supported by Dr. Philipp Lemke, won the pitch contest of the REACH - EUREGIO Start-up Center  of our University.
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Today, Bruno Moerschbacher was awarded the Best Teacher Award “Goldener Hans”.
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Today, the second of our Codeχ Mercator fellows, Prof. Zimmer from the US, gave a fascinating seminar on transmembrane polysaccharide synthases.
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Today, we re-started the monthly webinar series on structure-function relationships of chitosans organized by our DFG-funded Priority Program Codeχ on Chito-Protein Interactions.
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Today, we were informed that the proposal of Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher for a post-doctoral fellowship from the internationalization fund of our university for Dr. Laís Moreira Granato from the Universidade Federal de Vicosa in Brazil has been successful.
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This evening, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher was invited by the Heimatverein Senden e.V. to give a presentation about our research and its implications in the framework of the seminar series “Wissenschaft im Dialog”.
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Today, one of Margareta Hellmann’s manuscripts has finally been accepted for publication in the renowned journal “Scientific Reports”.
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Today, the PIs, post-doctoral and doctoral researchers of the research projects funded by the German Research Foundation DFG in the framework of its Priority Program “Codeχ [BM1] – The Code of Chito-Protein Interactions” met in Siegen for the first time.
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Today, Martin Bonin’s second central paper resulting from his doctoral project with us has been published in the renowned journal PLOS Biology.
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This year, we celebrated our Christmas party together with the group of Prof. Till Ischebeck, the designated successor of Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher. We also had a mixed orga team, and they did a great job! Food and Glühwein, Wichteln and Pub-Quiz were superb – we also deserved it after another highly successful year!
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He seems happy again this year. Nikolaus brought chocolate copies of himself for everyone. This year, with just five papers (so far! – more is to come...), including one that is still under embargo, we achieved an average impact factor of 8.2, essentially the same as last year (8.1) with then six papers.
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Today, our alumnus Dr. Martin Bonin was about those new doctors who were invited by our University to be honoured for defending their doctoral thesis this year with "summa laude".
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Today, we learned that yesterday, Carlos Girao from the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil, who had spent six months with us during his ongoing PhD earlier this year, was awarded third place for oral presentations
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Today, after a long preparation time, our proposal for a Start-up Transfer NRW project, along with its 14 (fourteen!) amendments, has finally been granted. Our alumna Dr. Anne Vortkamp together with our alumnus Dr. Philipp Lemke had applied to set up AgriBluBio
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Today, we were visited by a high-ranking delegation from Shandong province in China. The County Mayor of Linshu County, Mrs. Hou Suyun, accompanied by the Director of Linshu Economic Development Zone, Mr. Wang Shaolong, and the Director of Linshu County Industry 
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Today finally, we received the granting letter for our NRW Patent Validation project "Lab to Field". This will allow Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar and Dr. Carolin Richter, founders-to-be of our next start-up "greEnCAP", to perform field trials to add value to our patent "Chitosan-Coated Emulsion and Uses Thereof".
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Our 'sandwich' alumnus Prof. Enio de Oliveira and his wife Prof. Ana de Oliveira, both from the Federal University of São João del Rei in Ouro Branco in the State of Minas Gerais in Brazil, have arrived in Münster last weekend, and in our institute today.
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Today, after about two years, our joint project with Dr. Christian Gorzelanny from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf was granted by the German Research Foundation, DFG
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Today, during the Science to Start-up Convention S2SC of the REACH Euregio Start-up Center, Vera Fleuter obtained the REACH thesis award for her Master thesis
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This week, right after the excellent chitin and chitosan conference in Iceland, we had our own small, but not less intense chitin and chitosan meeting here in Münster
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Finally, after so many years without any international chitin and chitosan conference, we met with about 100 colleagues from all over the world in far-off, charming Siglufjörður, the Northern-most town of Iceland.
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Today, we finally received confirmation for our Start-up Transfer.NRW grant application to support the foundation of the planned biotech start-up AgriBluBio by our alumna Dr. Anne Vortkamp, supported by our alumnus Dr. Philipp Lemke.
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Finally, we received confirmation that our application for a NRW Patent Validation Grant for the patent "chitoCAP" was successful. We will use the budget to allow Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar and Dr. Carolin Richter to further validate their technology to produce chitosan-stabilized microemulsions of hydrophobic bio-actives such as plant essential oils to be used as environment-friendly and consumer-safe agro-biologics for sustainable agriculture.
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Today, this year's RootCamp Accelerator programme ended with a demo day where our alumnae Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar and Dr. Carolin Richter had the opportunity to pitch the idea for their start-up greEnCAP to industry giants, initiating potential collaborations with enthusiastic stakeholders.
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Today, Dr. Ratna Singh's manuscript on quantum mechanics based in depth in silico-analysis of copper ion binding to chitosan has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
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Today, the members of the AbDü consortium met for the kick-off meeting of this European research and development project which aims to develop an automated, AI-controlled bioreactor for the conversion of agricultural side streams into a smart biofertilizer.
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Just one week after his successful defence, Max Linhorst was awarded with the official doctoral certificate and, equally important, with the doctoral hat prepared by his colleagues from our team.
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Our ‘sandwich’ alumnus Dr. Enio de Oliveira and his wife Dr. Ana de Oliveira have both been granted three-month fellowships in the framework of the DAAD programme „Research Stays for University Academics and Scientists“.
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Today, Max Linhorst successfully defended his doctoral thesis on the biotechnological production of novel chitosan derivatives using chitin deacetylases acting in reverse.
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Today, we received the granting letter for our project ChitoCode in the framework of the DFG-funded priority programme (SPP 2416) “CodeΧ  -  Chitin, chitosan and chito-oligosaccharides and their interaction with proteins of the extracellular matrix and cellular signaling”.
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Today, we finally had another SP8 summer party, after the sad Corona times. Hopefully, we can now resume our regular annual schedule.
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This year, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher was invited as a guest lecturer at the 17th Summer Course Glycosciences, held 11 - 15 June 2023, in Wageningen, the Netherlands.
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This year, we reached the site of our mini-symposium, the girls scout home “Baustelle” in Dülmen, by bike. It took us a bit more than two hours, mostly along the “Kanal”, in beautifully sunny weather.
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Today, finally, Martin Bonin formally became Dr. Martin Bonin. First, his defence had to be postponed because both written reports evaluated his thesis as “summa cum laude”, necessitating additional evaluation by a third, independent, external reviewer.
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