Biomaterials in the entrepreneurial focus

The ryon Summer School offers young researchers (Master, PhD or Post-Doc) from various disciplines such as molecular biology, biochemistry, synthetic biology and materials science the opportunity to take their ideas to the next level. The program offers a mixture of scientific lectures, experiences of founders, teamwork and business coaching. The program concludes with a pitch in front of a jury of experts. The company “ryon” is a GreenTech Accelerator for start-ups and young companies in the fields of chemistry, biotechnology, materials science and engineering.

The Summer School offers not only scientific depth, but also practical insights into founding a company. Participants learn what steps are necessary to turn an idea into a successful start-up. Participants receive input from renowned researchers and successful founders. They develop their own business ideas and work them out.

The program is supported by the Rhine-Main universities Goethe University Frankfurt, Technical University Darmstadt and Gutenberg University Mainz and the technology transfer offices Highest, Innovectis and TQ.

Focus on biomaterials

The central theme of this year's Summer School is biomaterials, which are at the interface between biology and materials science. These materials are designed to interact with biological systems and are used in areas such as medical implants, hydrogels for tissue engineering and polymer nanoparticles for drug delivery. A particularly innovative area is engineered living materials (ELM), which combine biological systems with materials to enable unique and adaptive functions.

These developments are also a core component of the “CoM2Life” cluster project, which has been invited to submit a full application for the Cluster of Excellence funding line as part of the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments

Cluster project “Come2Life”

“CoM2Life” aims to develop a fundamentally new generation of soft biomaterials that are able to enter into permanent and reciprocal communication with biological systems such as cells and tissues by integrating the principles of living systems. The researchers are following an approach that combines the chemistry-centered design of biomaterials with the design of regulatory circuits in synthetic biology. This enables the development of intelligent biomaterials that are capable of selectively detecting signals from their environment, processing them internally and then controlling actuators and effectors as required.

TU Darmstadt is represented in the Excellence Strategy competition with a total of three project outlines. In addition to “CoM2Life” on communicating biomaterials, these are “Reasonable Artificial Intelligence” (RAI) on artificial intelligence and “The Adaptive Mind” (TAM) from the field of cognitive sciences.