Join us for the final day of #EnvBiotechAware Week, 3-7 March 2025 to celebrate the work of our membership and take a closer look at our activities and achievements from the last few years.
Featured Working Groups
What have our Working Groups been up to? Ably led by academics whose enthusiasm translates into action, see how EBNet support has benefited these communities. Today, we feature
• Environmental Biotechnology Network Themes report
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Working Group
• Early Career Researcher Working Group
“I am an Environmental Biotechnologist because….”
Our Early Career Researchers span a plethora of fields, technologies, universities and topics. But they all work within EB. We asked them to respond to: ‘I am an Environmental Biotechnologist because…‘ – a deceptively simple question! See responses from today’s featured ECR, Fiona Bunn.
Impact
We have a wonderful plethora of reports on this final day of #EnvBiotechAware week and they should provide plentiful reading for the weekend:
Our activities have been many and varied. Take a look at selected activities on our themes of Pollutants and Media; Microbiology and Engineering; and Technology Interfaces with a special overview of our Pollutants and Media theme.
Biological wastes and the circular economy: Not yet where we could be, an editorial by Prof Heaven and Dr Kusch-Brandt in Waste Management & Research 43(3).
Gas fermentation technologies have the potential to revolutionise sustainable bioproduction by enabling carbon capture and utilisation (CCU), but key research issues and implementation challenges need to be addressed. Read our EBNet / Carbon Recycling Network Joint Gas Fermentation Workshop Summary, Outcomes, Position Statement, and Priorities.
The modelling of sludge flow is complex, being a non-Newtonian fluid phase with an entrained solid phase, often mixed by injected gas bubbles. Recent developments have extended the modelling techniques. Falling under EBNet’s Engineering / Biology theme which considers interactions between microbial and engineering factors, this two-day workshop brought together sludge flow modellers with microbiologists and end users to discuss best practice, challenges and opportunities in sludge predictive behaviour from both a flow and biogas generation perspective. Here is our full Sludge Modelling Workshop Report and a Summary,
EBNet have also provided responses to a number of consultations, including:
- The BBSRC Forward Look for UK Bioscience 2024: Community Consultation
- Engineering biology: call for evidence (Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, 2023)
- A Fresh Water Future – CIWEM stakeholder survey 2023
Outreach
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| Help solve our water contamination crises by playing the game and solving the puzzles…… | What is Environmental Biotechnology? (Nearly 10,000 viewers can’t be wrong). |
We’ve commissioned books, animations and more – all available for the wider community to be used beyond the lifetime of our Network. Today, we report on the Green Stories competition.
Did you prefer audiobooks to old-fashioned print? Our anthology Microbes to the Rescue! is now available as an audio version here.
Stay tuned for the British Society of Soil Sciences ‘Soil Matters’ podcast episode featuring our very own Co-I’s Frederic Coulon and Tony Gutierrez . Click here or on the picture for a taster of what they covered and keep an out on the BSSS website for the podcast!
Selected Case Studies
Since 2022, our Proof of Concept (POC) grants have been carried out on on a double-blind basis in order to be as fair and equitable to applicants as possible. We reflect on the process here. See below for selected Business Interaction Vouchers and POCs we’ve funded:
- Bioleaching application for recovery of minor and rare earth metals from complex nickel alloys dust. Prof Sebastien Farnaud, Coventry University and Advanced Alloy Services Ltd (BIV202101)
- EPACS: Enhancing PFAS attenuation in coastal brownfield soils: Enhancing natural system attenuation capacity for a key emerging contaminant. Prof Andy Cundy, University of Southampton (POC202001)
- Bio-engineering of biochar for enhanced remediation of contaminated land. Dr Tony Gutierrex, Heriot-Watt University (POC202008)
- Fibre Highways: Translocation of the microbiome for pollutant bioremediation. Dr Angela Sherry, Northumbria University and Dr Jane Scott, Newcastle University (POC202015)
- Development of a monooxygenase gene-based assay to characterise 1,4-dioxane bioremediation potential. Dr Simon Gregory, British Geological Survey (POC202029)
Outreach
 | Hydrogen sulphide oxidising red photosynthetic bacteria |  | Filamentous microbiota and bacterial microbiota in pond wastewater treating plant |
| Images kindly provided by Prof Francisco Torrella of the University of Murcia Faculty of Biology, one of our valued group of international expert advisers | |||