Companies, farmers, nature and consumers alike depend on water. Yet despite the fact that 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, only 1% of it is drinkable. And as climate change progresses, ensuring sufficient water for everyone is becoming increasingly challenging. Advancing water purification technologies is therefore more essential than ever.
Since May, the Belgian pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2025 in Venice has been home to a unique experimental setup: Building Biospheres. For three months now, visitors have been experiencing how a planting area with 250 subtropical plants and trees creates a pleasant indoor climate.
Manon Steynen from the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering is trying to convert unhealthy sugar into healthy sugar.
In her master’s dissertation, bioengineer Elisa Kooy demonstrated how fish waste could find alternative uses, among others in future generations of rechargeable batteries. Her dissertation landed her the NBN Sustainability Award, which is part of the Flemish Dissertation Award. “The prize is wonderful but the process was even more valuable.”
Marine biologist and Professor Emeritus Patrick Sorgeloos (Faculty of Bioscience Engineering) was instrumental in shaping modern aquaculture in recent decades. If his career has taught him one thing, it is that aquaculture has a crucial role to play in continuing to ensure food security. “By 2050 more than half of our food must come from the sea. And it’s possible.”
Marianne De Backer is a heavyweight in the world of biotechnology. Today she is CEO of Vir Biotechnology, a biotech company headquartered in Silicon Valley. She is a champion of women in leadership positions in this still male-dominated industry.
“Climate change is a global problem. But if you really want to know its impact, you have to have local data.” So say meteorologist Steven Caluwaerts and bioengineer Pieter De Frenne. They both do research on microclimates, albeit with a different starting point. “Actually, we are very complementary. We should meet more often!”
What if trees could talk? Well, every so often they do. In doing so, they give a glimpse of the past. For example, a 250-year-old oak in the castle grounds at Elverdinge near Ypres tells us more about the First World War. The tree survived this war, despite the incessant bombs. The Woodlab at Ghent University tells us the touching story of this oak tree.
Deep in the Congolese rainforest stands a tower 57 metres high that is helping in the fight against climate change. Since October 2020, the Ghent University climate tower has been measuring both the amount of CO2 captured and stored by the tropical rainforest and the levels of water exchange between the forest and the atmosphere.
Marc Van Montagu, one of the founders of biotechnology, writes a letter to his 17-year-old self. 17. What advice does he have for the young Marc? A lad from a working class district in Ghent who in October 1951 took his first steps in the scientific world.
Seventy per cent of the earth is covered with water, and yet we know only a fraction of what all that water can actually do for us. The blue economy continues to discover amazing resources and solutions that lie hidden underneath the surface of the sea.
Helena Van Tichelen was in secondary school when the school strikes and marches around climate change erupted. Years later, she has not lost the commitment she picked up then. In mid-November, she put aside the lessons and courses of her third bachelor in bioengineering to travel to Egypt for the largest climate conference in the world: COP27.
