The Metabolic Engineering Conference, organized by the International Metabolic Engineering Society, is the leading conference in its field, bringing together scientists from around the globe who have and who are performing groundbreaking research in agriculture, medicine, biomanufacturing, genomics, and more. 

I had the opportunity, along with BMC colleague Lewis Willer, to attend ME 16 in Copenhagen this year for two of the five conference days, giving us a chance to meet with many of the members of BMC's Biotechnology family (Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts-BBIO, Microbial Cell Factories--MICF, Fungal Biology and Biotechnology-FBAB, Biotechnology for the Environment-BENV, Biotechnology for Sustainable Materials-BSUS, and Blue Biotechnology-BLUE) and to listen to them discuss their contributions to the wider field of metabolic engineering. 

I wasn't able to attend all of the talks, but I was able to see MICF Associate Editor Sang Yup Lee be presented with the Gregory N. Stephanopoulos Award for Metabolic Engineering and deliver a talk on the metabolic engineering of bacteria for the production of aromatic chemicals and polymers.  Prof. Lee also participated on a fascinating (if not a little scary) panel discussion on the future of data and A.I. in the field. 

Prof. Lee received a generous introduction from his friend and colleague, George Guo-Qiang Chen (Associate Editor for MICF) who the previous day also gave a talk on the promise of the synthetic biology of halophilic bacteria. 

I also had the good fortune to see Lars Blank (Associate Editor for MICF, BBIO, and FBAB) give a talk on using engineered microbes for open loop recycling, and Tae Seok Moon (Associate Editor for BBIO, BSUS, MICF, BENV, board member for BLUE) discuss the future of fecal matter in engineering microbes to upcycle waste plastics on earth and for space exploration. 

Mark Blenner (MICF), Philippe Soucaille (BBIO), Yong-Su Jin (MICF), Pia Lindberg (BBIO), Nathalia Vilela (FBUB, MICF, and BBIO) , Ralf Takors (MICF) and Fuzhong Zhang (MICF) also presented throughout the conference, though unfortunately I was not able to see their talks. 

Other members of our Biotechnology family helped to put chair the conference. Aleksandra Mironczuk (MICF) and Michael Koepke (MICF) both co-chaired ME16 while Eric Young (MICF) and Birgitta Ebert (MICF) served as session chairs. Nico Claassens (MICF), Lucilia Domingues (BLUE, BBIO), Cecilia Geijer (MICF), Maria Klapa (MICF), Yvonne Nygard (Editor-in-Chief of FBUB), and Justyna Ruchala (MICF) all served as Poster Evaluators for the early career researchers who presented their work at the conference (one of whom was Taehee Han, who serves on the Early Career Reviewer Boards for BENV, BLUE, and BSUS!). 

Nico Claassens also received the Jay Bailey Young Investigator Award in Metabolic Engineering!

All around, I had a wonderful time getting to catch up with some of these scientists, discussing current issues in research publishing and Open Access, and meeting brilliant early career researchers with BMC colleague Lewis Willer. 

If you are a part of the BMC biotechnology community and weren't able to attend the Metabolic Engineering conference this year, I would highly recommend attending in the future!

 Lastly, Microbial Cell Factories, jointly with Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts, are proud to have sponsored two Poster Awards at the Metabolic Engineering 16 Conference. The winners are: 

• Lorea Alejaldre, Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia, Spain – Poster: Using the Genomic Context to Engineer the Synthetic Biology Chassis Pseudomonas Putida KT2440
• Hyungrok Choi, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology– Poster: Precise Multiplex Insertion of Metabolic Pathways into Bacterial Chromosome Using CRISPR-Associated Transposase