10 – 12 February 2020
With much of the northern hemisphere-battling storm Ciara, Nottingham was the hot spot for the convergence of scientific minds to further technologies into to help develop the area of Carbon Recycling.
February 10th 2020 marked the start of a 2 day conference on “Carbon Recycling”. Hosted by University of Nottingham’s based BBSRC-NIBB “CCnet” and organised by network manager Louise Dynes. Along with the battling storm, the event also encountered last minute changes as a result of the original venue undergoing last minute refurbishment, subsequently the event was held at the Park Plaza Hotel, Nottingham, UK.
Formally starting with a Welcome dinner at the Hotel, there followed 2 days packed with talks, pitches and posters. With the aim of bringing together academic and industrial scientists, the conference attracted over 110 attendees, 29 of whom came from industry.
Delegates were mainly from the UK, with 27 from Europe, 3 from the USA and one from South Korea. A total of 21 talks were presented, 4 of which were invited, the rest were selected from abstracts.
CCnet director Prof Nigel Minton opened proceedings as chairman and there followed high calibre key note presentations from: Sean Simpson (LanzaTech, USA), Arren Bar-Even (Max Planck Institute, Germany), Irini Angelidaki (Technical University of Denmark) and Klaas Hellingwerf (Photanol, Netherlands).
Amid this star cast, 5 PhD students also gained valuable oral presenting experience with Ari Satanowski (Max Planck Institute, Germany) and Fabian Schwarz (Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany) carrying away a certificate of excellence and a CCnet goodie bag. A total of 36 posters were presented with 17 from PhD students. Carrying away prizes for the best posters were Amaury Montarnal (University of Nottingham, UK), Helge M. Dietrich (Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany) and Tatiana Spatola Rossi (Oxford Brookes University, UK).
Delegates gave good feedback for the conference. 94% of responders said it was well organised and that the programme was extremely/very engaging and met new contacts. They appreciated the high quality and variety in the programme. They also praised the opportunities for good discussion and networking. Many new relationships were forged which we are hopeful will initiate new collaborations.
Comments Included:
“Considering the last minute changes to venue the conference was executed smoothly”
“Brilliant conference, really enjoyed our time in Nottingham”.
“Excellent speakers”
“Great line up and good spectral of topic areas relevant to CCnet interests”