Jai Sankar Seelam delivers a talk to the Ecochem event
Busy summer of engagement for Ghent University partners
ALG-AD colleagues in Ghent have been busy with various engagement and promotional activities this summer, promoting the work being done on the project and raising awareness of the possibilities of the technology.
At the beginning of September Jai Sankar Seelam took part in the ECOCHEM C2C Knowledge Exchange event.
The event was supervised by ALG-AD’s Professor Erik Meers, who welcomed 12 PhD students from Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany) to Campus Coupure at University of Ghent.
The event was organized to enable active knowledge exchange between the two research groups. The visiting students were made into 5 groups together with local students to take part in speed-meetings. Projects aimed at developing novel biomasses and phytoremediation technologies were presented.
The ALG-AD project and its objectives were presented in a short pitch by Jai and received good feedback. The team were able to connect with a PhD researcher focusing on automation of microalgae cultivation systems during a later networking event.
Two different summer schools then followed. The first was organised by Nutri2Cycle under the title “Transition towards a more carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus efficient agriculture in Europe”.
The session "Novel feeds and alternative biomass resources" of the summer school was chaired by ALG-AD’s very own Dr. Marcella Fernandes De Souza.
The ALG-AD project was introduced by Jai Sankar Seelam to a group of 35 students from various academic backgrounds.
The potential of use of algal biomass as future-proof animal feed was discussed and the current lab-scale activities at University of Ghent together with upcoming pilot trials at the INNOLAB Investment site at Oostkamp were shared with the audience.
As a follow up, a group of 3 students developing a start-up based on utilizing microalgae as biofertilizers had a one-on-one discussion with ALG-AD team.
Following this was another summer school organized by the Food2Know business development centre at University of Ghent, titled “Plunge into Your Own Business Plan”.
The summer school was organized as a micro-MBA course fragmented into 9 modules. Students, including the project’s researcher Jai Sankar Seelam, were made to understand the principles of developing a business plan and then had to prepare a final pitch to the jury.
Jai’s idea was PROT-N-SUF with central theme of “Reinventing algal protein”. The idea is based on the concept on ALG-AD involving agricultural farmers, biogas plant operators and animal feed companies as key customer segments. He received useful critical remarks and suggestions from a jury comprising of investors, scientists and entrepreneurs.
Students at the Nutri2Cycle summer school discuss biofertilizers.
Jai Sankar Seelam introduces our project to the 35 students at the Nutri2Cycle summer school
Jai Sankar Seelam gives his project pitch on Prot-N-Suf