project granted: German-Norwegian project “CoFun: Developing co-production of lipids and chitosan in oleaginous filamentous fungi” will be financially supported by DAAD

Today, the CoFun student exchange project between our group and the one from Dr. Volha Shapaval from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Ås on the co-production of lipids and chitosan in Zygomycetes fungi was granted by DAAD. CoFun will support the BYPROVALUE project recently granted by the Research Council of Norway RCN to Dr. Shapaval to which we will contribute, as well as - hopefully - our joint research project LignoLipp (which was positively evaluated but not yet formally granted) in the framework of the European research program Bioeconomy in the North. To these projects, the Norwegian partners will bring in their expertise on oleaginous, i.e. lipid producing, fungi while we will contribute our expertise on chitin and chitosan extraction from fungal cell walls and their structural and functional characterization. The German part of the CoFun proposal was prepared by Dr. Jasper Wattjes - congratulation to your first proposal, Jasper! - who will also be responsible on our side for these projects. As a German-Norwegian “PPP” project of DAAD and RCN, CoFun will provide a budget for student and researcher exchanges between our groups which will greatly improve collaboration. We are looking forward to an exciting new research threat.