Experts from nova introduced:

Kerstin Iffland is a staff scientist/consultant at nova-Institute since 2014. She is involved in different (inter)national research projects about the material use of biomass for bio-based chemicals, materials and products, Industrial Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology, chemical-technological topics (e.g. biocatalysts, Photoelectrochemistry) and sustainable feedstock for industrial processes. In industrial projects as well as in the mentioned consortia she mainly focuses on technology scouting, TRL assessments, tailor-made market research and dissemination.

At the moment, she leads the FP7 Bio-QED project, where nova-Institute is responsible for techno-economical evaluation of itaconic acid and 1,4-butanediol production from 1^st and 2^nd generation feedstock and B2B and B2C dissemination (website, brochure, stakeholder workshops www.bio-qed.eu) of the project’s results. She was also responsible for a project concerning the technical consulting and advice on several PHA-patents for a venture capital fund. Moreover, She managed a project (mainly coordination and project management) for Neudorff dealing with resource selection. Most excitingly, she developed the new methodology “biomass utilization efficiency (BUE)”, which aims at bridging the valley of death of innovation by facilitating scientifically and economically sound decisions concerning feedstock, process, technology and product-combinations. This study is available as a nova paper #8 for free download here.

Furthermore, she is working in several other dissemination – science communication to the broader public, web design, organization of stakeholder workshops, techno-economic evaluation (TEE) and the following research projects:

• HEMICELL – a project within the WoodWisdom-Net Research Programm and ERA-NET Bioenergy. nova-Institute is conducting market research and techno-economic evaluation on wood based chemi-cals, in particular chemical modified hemicellulose, used as functional additives to enhance the material properties of cellulose esters. It is also responsible for dissemination (creation of brochures, website) http://hemicell-project.com/
• IB2 Market – bringing innovative industrial biotechnology research to the market. In this FP7 project nova-Institute is conducting a life cycle assessment (LCA) and researching relevant markets for the developed products (e.g. fucose) http://www.nova-institut.de/bio/index.php?tpl=project&id=999&proj=ib2market&lng=en&red=projectlist
• BIO-TIC – Although Industrial Biotechnology is considered a promising new technology, its exploitation is hampered by many hurdles. The EU project BIO-TIC aims to identify these hurdles and to formulate an action plan. nova mainly established a data collection framework on the use of biomass and industrial biotechnology. Together with the other partners a roadmap highlighting the hurdles and opportunities for a more sustainable chemical industry was created. http://www.industrialbiotech-europe.eu/
• ZeroCarbFP – The consortium of industrial partners works together to promote using waste streams to create value-added materials such as additives for lubricants, de-icers, metal recycling by green mining and chemical building blocks. Nova conducted an environmental hotspot and SWOT analysis.
• Pulp2Value – aims to demonstrate an integrated and cost-effective cascading biorefinery system to refine sugar beet pulp and isolate high value products for detergents, personal care, oil & gas, paints & coatings and composites. Nova is responsible to perform LCA, TEE and dissemination http://www.nova-institut.de/bio/index.php?tpl=project&id=1026&lng=en&red=startlist

Background and expertise:

Kerstin Iffland acquired her B.Sc. in Biomedicine at the RU Nijmegen and a M.Sc. in Neuroscience at the VU Amsterdam. Her more than five year lab experience in the areas of Nanochemistry, Neurobiology, and Industrial Microbiology was gathered at King’s College London, University College Dublin and the University Medical Centres and Hospitals at Amsterdam, Augsburg and Nijmegen. In her last project at TU Delft she applied different metabolic and genetic engineering approaches to alter S. cerevisiae for various industrial and pharmaceutical applications.
Kerstin Iffland, +49 (0)2233-48-1447 or kerstin.iffland@nova-institut.de

Selected publications:

• Iffland, K., Sherwood, J.,  Carus M., Raschka, A., Farmer, T., Clark, J. 2015: Definition, Calculation and Comparison of the “Biomass Utilization Efficiency (BUE)” of Various Bio-based Chemicals, Polymers and Fuels, Hürth 2015-11. Download at www.bio-based.eu/nova-papers
• Iffland, K., Aeschelmann, F., Raschka, A., Carus, M., Hummelsberger, M. 2015: Bio-based Polybutylene Succinate based on Bio-based Succinic Acid – An attractive polymer for the biopolymer toolbox, Hürth and Düsseldorf 2015-10. Available for download soon at www.bio-based.eu

Source

nova-Institut GmbH, 2015-11.

Supplier

nova-Institut GmbH

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