Bioeconomy and Sustainability Perspectives from Natural and Social Sciences, Economics and Ethics

Dirk Lanzerath graduated in philosophy and biology. He is executive officer of the German Reference Centre for Ethics in the Life Sciences (DRZE), a research centre of the Northrhine Westfalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts at the University of Bonn. He is professor of ethics at the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg and secretary general of the European Network of Research Ethics Committees (EUREC). Prof. Lanzerath is also a member of the Central Ethics Committee at the German Physician Association (ZEKO), the Ethics Committee of the University of Maastricht, and the Editorial Board of the Journal "Research Ethics Review.

Ulrich Schurr is a plant physiologist and heads the Institute of Plant Sciences at Forschungszentrum Jülich (Research Center Jülich - IBG:2 Plant Sciences). The institute is a world leader in plant phenotyping, developing quantitative methods for analyzing plant architecture and function in controlled environmental conditions and in the field, and translating these methods with partners into practical applications in horticulture, agriculture and breeding. He initiated and coordinates the German Plant Phenotyping Network DPPN. He is the chairman of the ESFRI project EMPHASIS and president of the global International Plant Phenotyping Network (IPPN). Uli Schurr has been leading the Bioeconomy Science Center, the largest European research network on sustainable bioeconomy based on the cooperation of the Universities of Bonn, Aachen, Düsseldorf and the Research Center Jülich, for 10 years. He initiated the Bioeconomy REVIER initiative to establish a model region for sustainable bioeconomy in the context of structural change in the coal-phase out in one of the coal-phase out regions in Germany. Ulrich Schurr is a member of the International Advisory Council for Global Bioeconomy (IACGB).

Christina Pinsdorf is a philosopher with a specialization in ethics. She holds a permanent post-doc positionas research associate at the Institute of Science and Ethics at the University of Bonn. Her research focuses on applied ethics, especially nature and environmental ethics, animal ethics, ethics of bioeconomy, as well as medical ethics. Furthermore, she has an expertise in philosophy of nature and German Romanticism. Besides diverse scholarships and academic distinctions she has won the Kant-Award of the Institute for Philosophy of the University of Bonn for her monograph „Lebensformen und Anerkennungsverhältnisse – Zur Ethik der belebten Natur“ (“Life Forms and Relations of Recognition – On the Ethics of Live Nature”). Currently she works on her habilitation project “Philosophie der Wildnis” (“Philosophy of Wilderness”).

Mandy Stake is a post-doc at the Institute of Ethics in the Neurosciences (INM-8) at the Research Centre Jülich in Germany. She studied philosophy and communication sciences at the University of Salzburg and recently completed her PhD-studies in philosophy at the University of Bonn. She was a research assistant at the Institute of Science and Ethics (IWE) and the German Reference Centre of Ethics in the Life Sciences (DRZE). Some of her main interests include philosophy of mind, metaethics and applied ethics, especially neuroethics, ethics of Artificial Intelligence as well as environmental ethics.