Interview: Transfer Professor Dr Martin Sieber

Science for better quality of life

Interview with transfer professor Martin Sieber

Martin Sieber, biology professor at the Department of Natural Sciences, officially assumed the first of three transfer professorships at the university in winter semester 2021/22. He wants to encourage the transfer of ideas, knowledge and technology among science, civil society and business.

Ɏ Why is a position like yours important for a

university of applied sciences?

Martin Sieber: The topic of transfer offers an ideal opportunity for positioning and visibility and is important for society. Although Germany is one of the countries with the strongest research in the life sciences, the transfer into concrete products does not take place sufficiently in this country.

Ɏ Is the commercial question central?

Sieber: No, it’s more about how transferring basic knowledge, such as a newly improved active ingredient, can contribute to improving people’s health and well-being. But transfer can also be important for issues like climate protection, sustainable production and clean water.

Ɏ How can you support transfer?

Sieber: There’s really no set formula. One option is to integrate aspects of application and development more strongly into teaching. Most biology courses are very heavily focused on training for academic research. Practical questions, such as which steps are necessary for drug approval, are rarely dealt with. We offer this as a module in the Biomedical Sciences Master’s degree programme. It’s opened the eyes of many students.

Ɏ Opened their eyes to what?

Sieber: To the wide range of professional opportunities available to them. But it also shows them that the often highly complex activities in development are fun and important. Biologists don’t just work in the lab. They’re also active in clinical research, as patent attorneys and as entrepreneurs.

Ɏ The title of “Transfer Professor” waives half of

your teaching load. How will you spend this extra time?

Sieber: Firstly, I’ll make teaching focus even more heavily on practice and also work more closely with companies, expand the internship exchange and organise a Pharma Summer School. This will allow students outside H-BRS to come into contact with the topic, too. Secondly, together with my professorial colleagues Ralf Thiele and Ralf Möller, I’ll continue to expand application-focused research at the Microbiome Center, such as the characterisation of microbial biodiversity in samples. Prof. Dr Martin Sieber holds one of three transfer professorships

More: Microbiome Center www.h-brs.de/en/ifga/ microbiome-center

Professor Luigi Lo Iacono

heads the Institute for Cyber Security & Privacy

“Data security and data protection go hand in hand and are everyone’s concern! That’s why cyber security and privacy must be viewed together and from a range of perspectives. This is exactly what we do at the Institute for Cyber Security & Privacy. We develop new approaches that we apply together with our cooperation partners. We can only expand our potential in contact with diverse partners. We exchange ideas with researchers from other disciplines, such as law, economics and social sciences, and usability research. We work with large companies as well as with SMEs that confront us with practical challenges. And we’re also networked with the public authorities that set the regulatory framework. If we want to find adequate solutions to the most urgent security and privacy challenges in our digital reality, we must depend on all these cooperation projects. Cooperation also plays a major role in expanding talent. We have good contacts in industry and place students in positions there. If they want to develop their talent in science in the long term, they can do so in our cooperative research projects. There are great opportunities for them to expand and explore their own ideas in such interdisciplinary environments.”