Blog

The programme for the XIX Spanish Biotechnology Society Congress – Biotec 2025 is becoming more and more detailed and we already know the names of the four speakers who will be leading the plenary sessions of the event, which will be held at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) between 15 and 18 July.

The plenary lecture on the opening day of the congress, Tuesday 15 July (19h), will feature Dr Michael Koepcke, Chief Innovation Officer of the company LanzaTech, which specialises in the capture and conversion of CO2 into compounds of industrial interest through biotechnological processes. Dr. Koepke is a pioneer and leader in synthetic biology, with more than 15 years of experience in biotechnology, and has received awards such as the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge for Greener Synthetic Pathways from the US Environmental Protection Agency. He is the inventor of more than 500 patents and has published more than 50 scientific papers, including seminal studies for a first genetic system and model for anaerobic carbon-fixing microbes and for the biofabrication of carbon-negative fuels and chemicals.

The plenary lecture on Wednesday 16 July (12:30h) will be given by Dr Fátima Bosch, professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the UAB and director of the Centre for Animal Biotechnology and Gene Therapy (CBATEG) at the university, which specialises in research into metabolic diseases, with a special focus on obesity and diabetes. Dr Bosch, whose lecture is entitled Gene therapy to treat highly prevalent metabolic diseases: A new horizon for human health, will talk about the potential of gene therapies to treat this type of pathology.

The third plenary lecture, on Thursday 17 July (12:30h), will be given by Dr Amparo Querol, scientific director of the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology (IATA-CSIC), Valencia, and will be entitled Optimisation of wine fermentations through innovative approaches: yeast biodiversity, multiomic analysis and design based on metabolic flux models. Querol, who directed the IATA between 2011 and 2015, has focused her research on yeasts used in the production of wine, beer and cider. As she points out, her interest focuses on understanding the mechanisms involved in the adaptation that has shaped the yeast genome, giving it properties of biotechnological interest. More recently, she has focused her work on strategies to remedy the impact of climate change on the wine sector, combining biotechnology with robotics and ICT. She has several patents on yeasts and microorganisms for wine production, and in 2013 she received the DiVinos research prize, awarded by the Regulatory Council of the DO Utiel Requena, for her contributions to the sector.

The fourth and last plenary lecture will be given on Friday 18 July (12h) by Dr Alfonso Valencia, ICREA researcher and director of the Department of Life Sciences at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS). There he leads a group dedicated to research into the applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence to personalised medicine, and is an international benchmark in the extraction, integration and exploitation of big data for genomic research. Dr Valencia is also director of the National Institute of Bioinformatics (INB-ISCIII), Spanish node of the European bioinformatics infrastructure ELIXIR, and co-director of the Master in Bioinformatics and Data Science in Personalised Precision Medicine and Health, organised since 2016 by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, in collaboration with the CNIO, the BSC-CNS, the Roche Institute Foundation and SEBiot. His lecture at Biotec 2025 will be on Biotechnology in the times of AI.

In addition to these keynote presentations, the programme will include, as in previous editions, thematic sessions on food biotechnology, biocatalysis, biotechnology and health, environmental biotechnology, microbial biotechnology, industrial biotechnology, plant biotechnology and new challenges in biotechnology. Each of these sessions will have two keynote speakers, two oral communications and two flash communications, selected from the proposals sent to the Scientific Committee of the congress. There will also be the possibility to present posters.

The period for the submission of oral communication proposals is scheduled to open on 15 February. The congress website will be published shortly with details of the calendar for the presentation and approval of oral communications, the thematic areas and the instructions for submitting abstracts.

The SEBiot Congress is an ideal framework for PhD students to have their baptism of fire in public presentations of their research, while they can learn first-hand about the work of experienced scientists and interact with them in the networking spaces.

Also as in previous editions, on the morning of 15 July, and prior to the opening of the congress, the Course on Omic Technologies and the Course on Biotechnological Processes and Applied Biocatalysis, which have been so successful in previous editions, will be held. ♦