(17.11.15) A series of events on the German-Russian collaboration in the field of biotechnology and the bioeconomy were held in mid-November. A delegation of 21 researchers from German universities and research centres in Aachen, Jülich, Munich and other locations travelled to the Pushchino Research Center in the region of Moscow Oblast. Their aim was to build on bilateral relations and networks in certain biological fields including innovation research and technology transfer between research and industry.

Around 100 delegates from research and development and interested businesses, economic administrators and research funding bodies visited the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Moscow for the "Cooperation between Russia and Germany in Biotechnology and Bioeconomy" Forum. The attendees presented their diverse cooperation programmes and discussed basic and industrial research as well as aspects concerning the commercialisation of research results in collaboration with partners from industry. In addition to presentations on programmes by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the German House for Research and Innovation (DWIH Moscow), there were also talks on funding opportunities within the Horizon 2020 EU Framework Programme and calls by the Russian Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises (FASIE). The Moscow-based delegates for the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Thuringia and Lower Saxony reported on the development of biotechnologies from their regions and presented current best practice projects.

A cooperation agreement between the Pushchino Biotechnology Cluster and the Düsseldorf-based Cluster Industrial Biotechnology (CLIB2021) was signed in Pushchino, the science city on the outskirts of Moscow Oblast. A conference for young researchers and other events incorporating other research aspects, e.g. biomedicine and the environment, also took place here.

The science city (Russian: naukograd) Pushchino has 20,000 inhabitants and is located approx. 120 km to the south of the city of Moscow. The Pushchino Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) was founded in 1963 to develop basic research in the field of physico-chemical biology. The core research areas of the centre, which employs 3,200 members of staff, include molecular biology, bioorganic chemistry, biotechnology, genetic engineering, production and environmental microbiology, biophysics and cell biology, photosynthesis and soil science, biological apparatus engineering and radio astronomy.

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