Communications

From September 6^th to 8^th, the European Bioeconomy Scientific Forum (EBSF) took place in Vienna.

It was organised on behalf of the European Bioeconomy University Alliance (EBU) and hosted by Universität für Bodenkultur Wien (BOKU). For this edition, the biannual event focused on the promotion of the transformation towards a sustainable bioeconomy. It gathered scientists, experts, policymakers, industry representatives, youth and other stakeholders from across Europe.

Three representatives of URD ABI were among AgroParisTech’s delegation and took the responsability of leading a workshop whose objective is to set up new collaborations for European research projects.

From August 20th to 25th, the city of The Hague welcomed the IUPAC/CHAINS2023. The conference brings together all disciplines of chemistry and a diverse audience of chemists from both academia and industry, and from all around the globe.

During the event, Beatriz Chicharo, PhD student in between Università Ca' Foscari Venezia and URD ABI-AgroParisTech, received the best poster award in the category of chemistry related to sustainability.

Well done Beatriz! Um grande bravo Beatriz!

Florent Allais spent a week at his alma mater campus (University of Florida) where he's had very fruitful discussions with colleagues from the Department of Chemistry, the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, the University of Florida International Center (Susanne Hill), as well as the IFAS Agronomy Department and the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

They've reviewed the University of Florida/URD ABI – AgroParisTech Dual degree PhD program that has allowed 4 French students to spend 3 years at UF as part of their 5-year PhD program and get both the PhD from University of Florida and that from AgroParisTech. Very satisfied with the results of this program, we all are more than motivated to renew it with a new cohort of students! Let's find a way to make it happen.

Being a new hosting institution of the NSF-funded REU program, URD ABI – AgroParisTech has been very happy to welcome two students. Next year, we shall be able to not only host new US-REU students, but also to send AgroParisTech students at the University of Florida. Stay tuned for the application call (September).

Building on the two above successful initiatives between the Department of Chemistry and URD ABI, we've decided to work on expanding further this collaboration the IFAS Agronomy Department and the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences… to be continued in the next episode!

In summary, a short but very productive stay under the Florida sun.

For two years in a row, Florent Allais is back in Venice, Italy (Università Ca'​ Foscari Venezia) for the 2023 IUPAC Green Chemistry Summer School (July, 4^th - 7^th 2023) chaired by Pietro Tundo and organized by Fabio Arico, Aurelia Visa, Mirabbos Hojamberdiev, Graziana Gigliuto and Beatrice Tassotti.

Many thanks to Sylvain Guyot (from INRAE) and the scientific committee of GROUPE POLYPHENOLS for having given Florent Allais the opportunity to present a plenary lecture on "Sustainable production and modification of p-hydroxycinnamic acids: an access to valuable biobased functional additives and materials" during the XXXI International Conference on Polyphenols (ICP2023) that was held in Nantes, France (July, 4^th 2023).

A great opportunity to talk about the Bazancourt-Pomacle biorefinery, the European Center for Biotechnology and Bioeconomy's and URD ABI - AgroParisTech's research activities, but also to catch-up with colleagues!

Delighted to announce that our LAGOON project has been selected for funding by the ANR (Agence nationale de la recherche) !

URD ABI - AgroParisTech is looking forward to working with LABORATOIRE URCOM (Michel GRISEL, Ecaterina GORE) and LVMH RECHERCHE (Cédric PEYROT, Patrick Choisy) to find new safe and sustainable functional additives/ingredients.

From June 25 to 29, Célestin BOURGERY, Horiya Nassiba HAM, PhD students, and Kévin AMRANI, engineer in biotechnology in the ReSolute project at ABI, attended the Biotrans 2023 conference on biocatalysis to present their work.

Célestin B. was present as a member of the organizing committee and presented his work on "Enzymatic synthesis and immobilization of coenzymes of interest: the example of NADP+ and coenzyme A".

Horiya H. presented her work on the “development of an enzymatic process for alkyl hydroxycinnamates synthesis”.

Kévin A. presented the Resolute BBI European project and the latest results of our work package "Scale-up of the enzymatic process to produce Cyrene™ from LGO and demonstration of the use of metal-free Cyrene™ in pharmaceutical and electronics manufacturing".

It was a great moment of conviviality, scientific exchange and encounters.

On June 26-28^th, Damien Breilly, post-doc fellow at URD ABI, was awarded a prize for his poster presented at the SCF Congress organized by the "Société Chimique de France" in Nantes, France. The presented work is part of the PIMyBone ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) project and deals with the synthesis of new biobased additives for bioresorbable bone filling materials and the caracterization of the newly formed biomaterials.

Well done Damien !

On June, 26^th-27^th, it was great to welcome all 10 National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded 2023 US REU students (Chloe Hansom, Erica Rosa Hengartner, Zoe Vetter, Madison Ross, Melissa Estrada, Jasmin Bioteau, Leopold Westrey, Jonah Perry, Marco Ortiz, Brandon Gonzalez), the US-France REU program advisors (Prof. Valeria D. Kleiman and Dr. Tammy Davidson) as well as Dr. Jason Portmess and Prof. Adrian Roitberg from the Department of Chemistry at University of Florida.

The US-France REU program, led by the University of Florida, has been existing for more than 25 years and allows French students (Université de Bordeaux, Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse III, University of Strasbourg and Sorbonne Université (Jussieu) and AgroParisTech) to do their Master 1 internship at University of Florida while students from different US universities do their undergraduate internship in the aforementioned French universities.

During their stay at European Center for Biotechnology and Bioeconomy, the students not only presented their research project, and got important information about graduate school/studies, but they also had the opportunity to visit our facilities and discover European Center for Biotechnology and Bioeconomy's research activities, especially that of URD ABI - AgroParisTech, as well as that of the Bazancourt-Pomacle biorefinery industrial players.

They also had the chance to climb to the top of the CRISTANOL mill and visit Givaudan Active Beauty.

From June, 12^th to June, 16^th, URD ABI welcomed 35 students and their tutors coming from 6 different leading European universities in bioeconomy (University of Hohenheim, University of Eastern Finland, Wageningen University & Research, Università di Bologna, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) and AgroParisTech).

During the whole week, students had the opportunity to: 1) Attend high level presentations related to bioeconomy; 2) Visit the European Center for Biotechnology and Bioeconomy (CEBB) and discover URD ABI – AgroParisTech’s and Chaire de Biotechnologie 3) CentraleSupélec’s labs and activities; 4) Visit the Bazancourt-Pomacle biorefinery; 5) Learn about Région Grand Est’s and Communauté urbaine du Grand Reims’s bioeconomy strategy; 6) visit Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne's ICMR, RIBP, Unité Mixte de Recherche FARE labs and know more about their activities.

At the end of the week, students presented their challenge (i.e., they worked for three months on a project related to the valorisation of one selected biomass) and they were all rewarded with the project certification.

Very happy to welcome again Prof. Gil Garnier from BioPRIA (Bioresource Processing Research Institute of Australia)- Monash Chemical Engineering - Monash University who's also a Visiting Professor at AgroParisTech - URD ABI - AgroParisTech.

Gil's catching-up with several URD ABI - AgroParisTech's members with who he's been already working with (Antoine Gallos, Louis Mouterde, Sami Fadlallah, Matthieu Mention and Célestin Bourgery...) and he'll meet colleagues who joined us recently.

Since mid-May, we're pleased to have Chloe Hansom (Texas State University) and Erica Rosa Hengartner (University of Florida), two National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded REU program students, at URD ABI - AgroParisTech within the European Center for Biotechnology and Bioeconomy.

Chloe Hansom works with Sami Fadlallah on biobased polymers and Erica Rosa Hengartner works with Célestin Bourgery and Louis Mouterde on biocatalysis.

On June, 5^th, URD ABI was very happy to welcome our colleagues from Gembloux Agro-BioTech to present our research, visit the European Center of Biotechnology and Bioeconomy (CEBB), and discuss future collaborative projects!

The 2023 "Biomass to biobased chemicals and materials" Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) took place at Sunday River Skiway - Grand Summit Resort Hotel at Newry, ME from May, 28^th to June, 2^nd 2023, right after its sister Gordon Research Seminar (GRS). Organized and chaired by Florent Allais, this conference gathered ca. 120 world leaders in their fields of expertise as well younger scientists (graduate students, postdocs...) around 9 scientific sessions. Amandine Flourat, who was also part of the GRC, presented a poster on the BoostCrop project dedicated to the synthesis of molecular heaters for crops protection.

It was nice to experience what makes the GRC so great: a scientific community living together 24/7 for 5 days in a relaxed - yet studious - environment. Also, we were glad to see long-time colleagues (we may as well say friends) and to make new ones. Looking forward to the 2025 edition of this GRC!

From May, 23^rd to 25^th, Florent ALLAIS, Director of URD ABI, Kévin MAGNIEN, Deputy Director and Business development Manager of ABI, Kévin AMRANI, Engineer in Biotechnology of ABI and Honorine KATIR Operations and External Relations Manager of CEBB participated at BIOKET 2023 organized by B4C Cluster in Trois-Rivières in Canada.

Florent presented the ABI's latest works on our innovative biobased, safe and biodegrable chemicals and materials from biomass and was the chairman of the session entitled « Extraction and Purification ».

Kévin A. presented the Resolute BBI European project and the last results of our workpackage « Scale-up of the enzymatic process to produce Cyrene™ from LGO and demonstration of the use of metal-free Cyrene™ in pharmaceuticals and electronics manufacturing ».

Kévin M, met many new partners during B2B meetings while fostering new collaborations with our researchs colleagues from Canada.

It was also a real pleasure to discuss with some of our long-term partners such as Genopole and Grand Est Region.

On March 30-31 ^st, one of our PhD student, Robin Fournier, has participated in poster sessions at the« Transdisciplinary research for a healthy planet » symposium organized by University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne. Robin has presented a retrospective on one of our major research topic, the valorization of cellulose through Levoglucoscenone (LGO)-based green synthetic pathways toward biobased high value added chemicals and solvents.

On March, 29^th, Kévin Magnien, deputy director and business development manager at URD ABI, gave a presentation at the Forum LABO and participated at the round table organized by CEBB.

Kévin presented the european Resolute project and the last results of our workpackage « Scale-up of the enzymatic process to produce Cyrene™ from LGO and demonstration of the use of metal-free Cyrene™ in pharmaceuticals and electronics manufacturing »

On March 21^st, URD ABI was represented at the B4C community's plenary meeting on Bio-based Molecules and Related Processes. Two of our PhD students, Horiya HAM and Floriane RISCHARD, presented their thesis project in 180 seconds on the development of an enzymatic process for alkyl hydroxycinnamates synthesis, and on novel bio-based multifunctional emollients for cosmetic formulations, respectively.

From February, 17^th to March 3^rd, as Adjunct Professor at the Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Department at Monash University (Clayton, VIC, Australia), Florent Allais spent two weeks at Prof. Gil Garnier’s BIOPRIA research center. During its stay, he catched up with the graduate students he’s co-supervising and discussed with other graduate students, post-docs, faculty and researchers on their on-going projects. Several new project ideas have been identified and will be investigated soon.

While at Monash, Florent Allais also catched up with John Warner with who we’ve been in touch for several years now and who’s Visiting Professor at URD ABI – AgroParisTech. Finally, through his participation, as a plenary speaker, at the “Engineering Plant Biomaterials for Advanced Manufacturing” symposium organized by BIOPRIA, Florent Allais also met Orlando Rojas from UBC (Canada) and discussed potential joint projects as well.

On March 1^st, URD ABI was at the « Paris International Agricultural Show » on the AgroParisTech booth to talk about bioeconomy and cosmetics. Several examples of agricultural coproducts valorization were presented through a game to show the audience green alternatives to petroleum-based products, in addition to the two workshops led by our partners from the Chaire de Cosmétologie and the UMR SayFood.