Tomorrow is discussed Today – Bioeconomy in Food for an Urban Society.

Professor in Agricultural and Biological Engineering & Director of the Florida Climate Institute

Dr. Senthold Asseng is a professor in agricultural and biological engineering at the University of Florida and the Director of the Florida Climate Institute. He is a Member of the Scientific Committee of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project – AgMIP.

Professor at the Institute of Space Systems

Prof. Ewald received his doctorate at the University of Cologne in 1986 with a thesis on radio astronomy with a minor in human physiology. From his work as a project manager at DLR he was appointed to the German astronaut team in 1990 and flew to the MIR space station in 1997 after training periods in Russia. The 20-day space flight MIR’97 was mainly aimed at medical experiments. From 1999 Prof. Ewald supported the flights of the ESA astronaut colleagues to the International Space Station ISS in various leading positions. For this purpose he led the ground teams at the ESA Columbus Control Center in Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich to the operational readiness for the Columbus installation mission 2008 and the subsequent operation of the ESA laboratory module docked to the ISS. After secondments to the ESA headquarters in Paris, among others, he retired from ESA in 2018. Since 2015 he has been appointed Professor of Astronautics and Space Stations at the University of Stuttgart, where he supervises students and doctoral candidates with topics in astronautics (including regenerative life support systems) and space exploration.

Brian joined Metabolic in 2018, where he works on the development and deployment of science based targets in the agri-food system, and the diffusion of interventions at different scales for a transition towards increased system resilience and sustainability. Through this work he has developed a deep understanding of mixed research methods, process facilitation, and policy advocacy. Brian has co-founded two food startups, and worked with various local food and agriculture cooperatives and transition initiatives in Germany. He is also a member of Freiburg Scientific Theatre, where he uses theatre to promote and facilitate transdisciplinary dialogue.

Foresight Manager

Johannes Mahn is Foresight Manager at Evonik Industries AG in Essen. 
Prior to that he’s been a Project Manager Trend Research at DPDHL Research & Innovation GmbH in Bonn and a Senior Foresight Consultant at Z_punkt GmbH – The Foresight Company in Cologne. He studied at the Leuphana Universität at the Center for Sustainability Management in Lüneburg and the Business and Information Technology School in Iserlohn.

Professor and Chair for Food Law

Professor Kai Purnhagen (PhD (EUI), LLM (Wisconsin-Madison), MJI, State Exam (Giessen)) is Professor and Chair for Food Law, University of Bayreuth, Campus Kulmbach, Co-Director of the Institute for Food law and a distinguished international visitor at the Rotterdam Institute for Law and Economics, Erasmus University of Rotterdam Law School. He has broad expertise in international and EU law, especially in internal market, competition and trade law, private law, as well as in WTO litigation. Previously he served as Assistant and Associate Professor at Wageningen University, Akademischer Rat aZ at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, post-doc researcher at the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam and lecturer at the University of Lucerne. Previous positions include a Fellowship at the Law School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at the University of Amsterdam and a visiting scholarship at the London School of Economics.

Director for Sustainability Development of Nutricion & Care

Dr. Michael Binder is Director for Sustainability Development of Nutricion & Care of the Evonik GmbH and holds a degree in technical biology at the University of Stuttgart in Germany. Within Evonik Nutrition&Care GmbH, he takes care of international sustainability programs and projects for feed and food systems transferring LCA approaches into marketing concepts.

He further presents Evonik in the EU Association of Specialty Feed Ingredients and their Mixtures (FEFANA), where he headed the technical advisory group of the SFIS project phase II. He is also member of the IFIF board of directors and the sustainability committee. As a member of the Technical Advisory Board of the PEFCR on behalf of the Technical Secretariat of the pilot on feed for food producing animals he also worked with the DG Environment of the European Commission for setting standards in sustainability measurements. Further Michael Binder supports the FAO teams (Food and Agriculture Organisation of o the United Nations) or writing guidelines on nutrient flows and the use use of feed additives within the LEAP (Livestock environmental Assessment and Performance) program.