Four UPWr scientists in Mozart programme

Civic Support for Partnership of Higher Education and Science and Economic Activity Sector MOZART programme was accepted by Wrocław City Council in 2012. The goal of the programme is to support Wrocław job market by enabling companies access to scientists’ intellectual potential. For five years the city has been supporting the implementation of scientific-business partnership projects lodged in various areas including: biotechnology, medicine, construction, information technology or robotics. As usual, the scientists from UPWr were featured in the latest, 6th, edition of the programme.

Prof. Aneta Wojdyło from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Science, along with Cold Brew sp. z o.o originating from Hamda Trade company, the owner of a coffee brewery and a chain of Wrocław coffee shops Etno Cafe, is going to carry a project whose goal is to evaluate the health-promoting potential of used raw material created in the process of coffee brewing and macerating, along with setting a direction for their management.

Its goal is to solve the problem of post-production waste, which is generated during the process of macerating ground beans while producing the cold brew drink – explains prof. Wojdyło, adding that as part of the project she’s planning to isolate active biological compounds contained in that waste, evaluate their pro-health potential in in vitro research, and undertake the application of bioactive fraction derived from said waste to design functional food. Furthermore, it is a continuation of cooperation with a company being the aftermath of developing and putting on the market an alternative natural energy drink – Cold Brew Coffee.

In the application form lodged with Wrocław Academic Hub we can read that the result of the design assumptions for Cold Brew sp. z o.o is going to be the possibility to set a course for new business activities, innovative in their nature, which in the future might bring viable benefits not only to the company but also to society.

Dr hab. Szymon Szewrański from the Department of Landscape Management within the Faculty of Environmental Engineering and Geodesy is going to carry out the project along with Biskupin housing cooperative. Its goal is to develop a decisive tool supporting the cooperative’s environmental management, made up of elements of spatial information system (GIS) integrated with business analytics system (BI) – eng. location intelligence.

– The implementation is going to be based largely on open source software. As part of the project an environmental overview is going to be performed, pressure and influences determined, ecomaps of dangers and risk developed, and spatial information integrated with databases for water and energy usage, waste creation and greenery maintenance – explains dr Szymon Szewrański.

For the system that’s going to be implemented in the cooperative there will be efficiency indicators’ matrices developed. – To put it bluntly, the cooperative will gain practical tools which will help making administerial decisions. The system will allow to aggregate, filter, visually evaluate and explore large amounts of environmental-spatial data. Ultimately, it will allow for water and energy usage to be reduced thus ensuring more efficient adaptation to local-based climate change and better management of city greenery – says dr Szewrański, adding that in this manner it will be possible to detect irregularities and waste of resources and – as a result – avoid environmental losses.

Dr Paweł Lochyński gained support for the project which is going to be carried out along with EMC Sp. z o.o. i Wspólnicy Sp. k. – plating soldered elements made of copper and brass, and increasing the security of technological processes. ECM holds a leading position in electrochemical metal buffing industry. They offer consulting in the range of metal processing assortment, cost optimization and corrosion prevention, all that in cooperation with Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Derustit GmbH and UPWr among others. The goal of the project carried out along with dr Lochyński is to achieve proper preparation of surface before the process of nickelling, choice of parameters, achievement of the most even cladding on complicatedly-shaped elements and in places of soldering copper with brass, and monitoring the pollution level of processing bath. In the application form lodged with Wrocław Academic Hub the meaning of the project for increasing security has been stressed – the use of corrosive substances in manufacturing creates a hazard for employees’ health but it also has an impact on the increased number of appliance malfunction.

The aspect of increasing the security of the conducted technological processes, so not only nickelling, is important from the point of view of gaining experience in industrial conditions, it will also translate into the realization of chemical safety and technological processes safety classes, both of which I’m the manager of in the safety engineering field of study – adds dr Paweł Lochyński.

In the cooperation with Wroclaw ZOO dr Tomasz Strzała is going to carry out his project on developing and implementing pilot model of ex situ conservation with the use of modern molecular biology tools. Wroclaw ZOO is the oldest zoological garden in Poland, there is about 12,000 animals representing over 1,100 species. It’s also one of the five oldest zoological gardens in Europe that’s becoming more and more engaged in saving endangered species in natural habitat.

– One of the methods of animal protection is ex situ conservation which aims to maintain the endangered population in natural habitat until it’s possible to displace individuals from the husbandry and into the natural habitat – explains dr Tomasz Strzała adding that from the point of view of effective animal husbandry, individuals’ well-being, and future successful reintroduction, the choice of initial individuals is crucial. This is where molecular biology comes into play giving the possibility to determine the level of wild animals’ population variability, and, based on the obtained information, make such a choice of individuals for the husbandry so that they represent as wide spectrum of that variability as possible.

– Our goal is to prepare and conduct the process of creating and sustaining ex situ husbandry, so outside of animals’ natural place of occurence, basing on an endangered model of a species of Laotian rock rat (Laonastes aenigmamus) discovered several years ago. It’s a likeable and very sociable animal but due to it being endangered our job is to collect and develop genetic data essential for a correct set up of the husbandry. It will allow us to prepare a schematic of individual associating paying special attention to maintaining the highest level of breeding population’s bio-diversity – stresses dr Tomasz Strzała.

According to Wrocław City Council’s act no. XXIX/652/12 from July 5, 2012 eligible for financial support for projects are scientists who have been awarded doctoral scientific titles and are employed at a university, or in a scientific unit at the position of teaching and research employee, and an entrepreneur employing people in Wrocław. The partners were first invited to take part in the programme in 2012, and the last, 6th, edition was planned for academic year 2017/18. The competition is organized by the President of Wrocław, and responsible for completing the task is the Office for Cooperation with Universities in the Municipal Office of Wrocław.

Click here for more information about the UPWr and Wroclaw ZOO collaborative project which is part of DODO foundation.

kbk