Chemie IOCB News

Jonas Spang received “GBM-Master Award” at the "Graduates' Day" of Bielefeld University

2026-10-14T14:52:58+02:00

On December 6, 2024, the traditional annual "Graduates' Day" of Bielefeld University took place. Within the graduation ceremony of the Faculty of Chemistry, Jonas Spang was awarded the "GBM-Master Award" for the best master thesis in biochemistry at Bielefeld University in this year. This prize is awarded by the "Gesellschaft für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie" (GBM), being the largest bioscientific society in Germany, to graduates who have submitted an outstanding Master's thesis. Jonas Spang received the "GBM-Master Award" for his research achievements in combining a chemocatalytic high pressure reaction with a transamination within a one-pot process. In this process, Rh-catalyzed hydroformylation and enzymatic transamination steps run in a tandem-mode at 20 bar of syngas pressure. The compatibility of these two reactions is demonstrated by the high conversion obtained for the resulting amines. This research work was done within joint research collaboration projects with Professor Dr. Jan von Langermann (Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg) and Priv.-Doz. Dr. Andreas Vorholt (Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, Mülheim an der Ruhr). Jonas Spang completed his master thesis on this research work in this July, and his results have recently been published in "Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry" (so far as Advance Article; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D4OB01513D). After completing his master thesis on chemoenzymatic one-pot synthesis in our group at Bielefeld University, Jonas Spang started his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Graz to conduct further biocatalysis studies under supervision of Professor Dr. Wolfgang Kroutil. From the research group IOCB at Bielefeld University, we congratulate Jonas Spang very much for this "GBM-Master Award", and we wish him all the best for his further biocatalysis research and Ph.D. thesis at the University of Graz!

Article

Poster Award

2026-09-02T13:04:07+02:00

Jana Löwe won the molecular catalysis poster award for her poster entitled, "Replacing co-substrates by carbon dioxide, water and light: A novel perspective towards bulky amines" at the 1st Biocascades Symposium & 8th International Cebitec Research Conference 2018 (ICRC 2018).

Poster Award granted

2026-09-02T13:02:57+02:00

During a SusChemSys 2.0 meeting at the RWTH Aachen on the 6th of April, Alessa Hinzmann and Tobias Betke were awarded both with a Poster Award out of 25 different posters for their contributions to the meeting. The committee og the award consisted of several industrial partners within the SusChemSys 2.0 cluster, which encourages us to pursue our focus on the process development for biocatalysis even further in the future.

Hajime-Hoshi-Price

2026-09-02T13:02:00+02:00

On 27 January, the German-Japanese Society Bielefeld (DJG) awarded the Hajime Hoshi Prize 2017 to biotechnologist Keiko Oike (27) from the Faculty of Chemistry at Bielefeld University. Keiko Oike was honoured for her outstanding scientific achievements and her commitment to supporting and integrating Japanese guest students. Gesa Neuert, President of the DJG Bielefeld, presented the certificate for the 1,000 euro prize. Keiko Oike comes from Toyama, on the north coast of Japan, and completed her Bachelor's and Master's degree in Biotechnology at Toyama Prefectural University, for which she received the university's best student award in 2013. Since 2016, she has been working on her doctorate in the field of biocatalysis in Professor Dr Harald Gröger's research group at Bielefeld University. The Hajime Hoshi Prize, awarded jointly by the DJG Bielefeld and Bielefeld University for the third time, is named after the important Japanese science patron Hajime Hoshi (1873 to 1951).

[Article]

Green Chemistry

2026-09-02T12:48:42+02:00

Producing the active ingredient for a drug is a complex and lengthy endeavour: It often requires around a dozen production steps, reaction stages in which the respective product has to be isolated, separated and purified again and again. "This should and can be done in a more environmentally friendly way," says Prof Dr Harald Gröger from Bielefeld University.

[Article]

Otto Roelen Medal for Harald Gröger

2026-09-02T12:39:22+02:00

Professor Dr Harald Gröger from Bielefeld University has been awarded the Otto Roelen Medal 2014 by DECHEMA and the German Catalysis Society in recognition of his work on the coupling of chemo- and biocatalytic reaction steps in the enantioelective synthesis of drug building blocks. By combining chemical and biotechnological processes, Harald Gröger links two worlds that were previously considered separately.

13th International CeBiTec Symposium “Multi-Step Syntheses in Biology & Chemistry - An International Young Investigator Conference”

2026-09-02T12:38:11+02:00

Biocatalysis is one of the key technologies, that will shape not only the industrial landscape, but also our daily lives in the future. This interdisciplinary field of research, which combines biology and chemistry, opens great perspectives for basic research as well as industrial applications. This was part of the occasion of the 13th International CeBiTec Symposium “Multi-Step Syntheses in Biology & Chemistry - An International Young Investigator Conference” that was held at Bielefeld University on December 2019. Head speakers have been Prof. Shuji Akai from the Osaka University in Japan, Dr. Daniel Fitzpatrick from the University of Cambridge, Prof. Julia Frunzke from the Research center Jülich and Dr. Matthias Höhne from the University of Greifswald. Fields of tailor-made bio-catalyst design and applications thereof, combination of biocatalysis and chemocatalysis and synthetic biology towards multi-step syntheses from both, an academic and industrial perspective, were part of this symposium. In addition, emerging recent trends mostly done so far out of the area of biocatalysis, which, however, are expected to have a strong impact on biocatalysis in the future will be addressed such as, for example, flow-chemistry, machine learning self-automatization. A further focus of this symposium were contributions of young researchers to present their research achievements and latest results in the plenum as well as lectures and poster presentations. They had the opportunity to present their work and to discuss on the future prospects of biocatalysis in order to promote the networking of the next generation of biocatalysis researchers.