Bioalchemistry – our future?

»Can we spin straw into gold like in the fairy tale of Rumpelstilzchen without putting valuable things at risk? Is it possible, at least to some extent, to build a sustainable and better world from materials and raw materials that have been ignored or considered worthless up to now and to give humanity a future?«

Frank Mentrup, Lord Mayor of the City of Karlsruhe, is taking the plunge and dares to say yes. He said it was encouraging to see that, in addition to small start-ups and niche sciences, the research departments of industry and science in all fields have set out on an interdisciplinary and globally networked journey to try out new things and to look at already known natural resources with different eyes.

For thinking together and jointly exploring paths, speakers from very different disciplines were invited to this event as only the diversity of different fields of knowledge and perspectives corresponds, on a smaller scale, to our global society.

Innovative approaches with bio-matter under the latest research are already being used in areas such as architecture and energy and food production. Water, wood, vegetable waste, microalgae, insects and straw have already become basic materials.

Dr. Frank Mentrup goes a step further when he asks who owns the rights to these well-known »new« materials when research groups have been involved in their development, and the question arises as to whether this blocks sectors of the economy, whether this sets narrow political boundaries or even makes a fairer world possible in terms of international law. Coincidences, ideas, visions, science fiction or comics were the inspiration for these »products«.

These questions and approaches can carry with them social hypes as well as new utopias. The symposium, however, attempts to leave such approaches behind in an effort to find answers to the question of the sustainability of current technological developments and their acceptance in society.

The entire event will be transmitted via live stream on the net and will then remain accessible on YouTube and www.karlsruher-forum.de.