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 of Darmstadt and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz - and the technology transfer offices Highest, Innovectis and TQ.

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

Text: Centre for Synthetic Biology/eml/bjb