The joint publication "Engineering aspects of hydrothermal pretreatment: From batch to continuous operation, scale-up and pilot reactor under biorefinery concept" (https://n9.cl/gnnuz) has won the BIORESTEC 2023 Impactful Review Award from Bioresource Technology, which is given to the top 10 cited papers in 2022. This award was presented during the conference: 4th International Conference for Bioresource Technology for Bioenergy, Bioproducts & Environmental Sustainability in Italy (https://n9.cl/7bjcu). Congratulations!

Kniffelix is a product of KinderForscher at the TUHH and is financed by "Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung", "Ralf-Dahrendorf-Preis", "Merck" and the "Hamburg Open Online University". Visit kniffelix.de for interesting hands-on material about different research topics from everyday life including an interview with Lara Gibowsky (PhD student at the Institute of Thermal Separation Processes). More information can be found in this flyer.

The joined publication "Climate Informed Engineering: An Essential Pillar of Industry 4.0 Transformation" (ACS Eng. Au 2023, 3, 1, 3–6) of the Hamburg University of Technology together with the Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources and the Max -Planck-Institute for Meteorology is published on the front cover of the open access journal ACS Engineering Au.

Prof. Irina Smirnova recently joind the Board of Directors of the DECHEMA e.V. together with Dr. Cord Landsmann (tyssenkrupp / Uhde and Dr. rer. nat. Beate Müller-Tiemann (Sanofi-Aventis). More information about the new board members of the DECHEMA e.V. can be found here.

We are delighted to share that our project partners IRES have travelled to Germany in December 2022 to visit the pilot line developed by HTWK Leipzig and the production at Hamburg University of Technology. During the visit in both sites, IRES had the chance to conduct an on-site exposure assessment on the production line of the textile reinforced concrete and an on-site evaluation of the safety aspects and emission potential during the various stages for the aerogel production and handling. For more information about the progress of the iclimabuilt project you can visit our website: https://iclimabuilt.eu/

Recently, our first project meeting of our EU Project took place in Presence at Cálem Wine Cellars in Porto, Portugal. Including our institute, a total of 27 industrial partners and universities participated in the meeting.

On November 24, the first aerogel workshop took place within the framework of our Dahrendorf project on the EU project NanoHybrids (funded by the BMBF, funding code 01DT22001) in cooperation with the KINDERFORSCHER AN DER TUHH. 13 students from grade 11 of the Carl-von-Ossietzky-Gmynasium visited our institute and conducted experiments on the topic of aerogels under the guidance of Gesine Liese, Julia Husung (KINDERFORSCHER AN DER TUHH) and Dr. Baldur Schroeter. Protein gels already produced in the school lessons were dried using various methods like ambient and supercritical drying and different biopolymer hydrogels were produced in our aerogel lab. In addition to the practical part, we conducted also campus and institute tours and gave information about studying at TUHH. The students were accompanied by our former employee Xihua Hu as teacher. We are looking forward to the next workshop!