Start of a worldwide scientific competition for bioprocesses

18-03-2011: Scientific workgroups from research institutions all over the world can now register for the so called “BlueCompetition”, run by BlueSens gas sensor GmbH. The German manufacturer of gas analyzers for bioprocesses is launching this large-scaled event this year for the first time.

From May till the beginning of September the competition stage starts and will be about optimizing gas analysis in bioprocesses. Scientists from the Life Sciences, Biotechnology and other faculties are called on to take part in this comprehensive competition to find new and creative ways of analyzing gases in fermentation processes. “With the BlueCompetition we want to give new impetus to the scientific discourse about Bioprocessing”, explained Dr. Holger Mueller, one of the managing directors of BlueSens. New applications and fermentation techniques or simplified biotechnical processes could be the result of this initiative. Over 30 scientific teams are expected to take an active part in the contest.

“The Competition was the corollary of smaller competitions and very successful cooperation with various universities in the past years”, emphasized Mr. Mueller. After the application phase this spring the participating groups have time till September to run their experiments and to write a short report with their results.

An independent scientific jury will survey the results of the workgroups and define the first three winners. At the moment the jury consists of Prof. Dr. Lars Blank (TU Dortmund), Prof. Dr. Gesine Cornelissen (HAW Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Eiden (FH-Recklinghausen) and Prof. Jean Francois Hamel (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT). As a financial incentive for the teams the total prize money for the award is 9,000 euro. The best reports will be published by the organizing company. For the project duration the participants also have the opportunity to receive a loan of gas measuring devices from BlueSens.