From February 10th to 12th, representatives from the Bioindustry 4.0 project gathered at RWTH Aachen in Germany for a packed two-and-a-half-day meeting. The agenda was full of workshops, work package highlights, and plenty of time to reflect on the past year and reconnect with each other.
Sessions covered a range of topics, including LEAF and SCHEMA-assisted model execution from the data fabric side, as well as collaboration and alignment across work packages. On the external side, we were lucky to have some great guest speakers: Nicolas Cruz from TU Berlin and Paul Brunzema from the Institute for Data Science in Mechanical Engineering at RWTH both gave talks on bioprocess engineering, and we also heard about BioBlock, a blockchain-based biotech marketplace/platform, as well as the current status and future plans for an IBISBA Germany Node.
The meeting wrapped up with a tour of the Center for Next Generation Processes and Products (NGP²) biorefinery facilities, led by project partner and host Jörn Viell — a real highlight for many of us to see the facilities and machines used in bioprocess engineering firsthand.
With the project drawing to a close later this year, the meeting also gave us a chance to align our goals for 2026 and take concrete steps toward turning the research done in Bioindustry 4.0 into tangible services and tools.