With the supporting of Sino-German Center for Research Promotion, for the second time already, German and Chinese colleagues working in fungal biotechnology – including fungal genetics, cell biology and process engineering - met to present their ongoing research, discuss future collaborative efforts and enlarge or deepen their network. While the first meeting had taken place in Berlin in 2017 under coordination of Vera Meyer (TU Berlin) and Jibin Sun (Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, TIB, Chinese Academy of Sciences, CAS), this years’ event was held in China at the TIB under co-coordination of Chaoguang Tian (TIB) and J. Philipp Benz (Technische Universit？t München, TUM).

The symposium was sub-divided into two full days including 23  intriguing lectures giving by 9 from Germany side and 14 from China side, covering mainly topic in fungal biotechnology, such as enzymes production, secondary metabolite and synthetic biology.  An excursion day in the middle, which led the participants to the State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, of the CAS in Beijing, organized by Wenbing Yin. There, the group met with the researchers of the institute for a satellite meeting, get-together and a guided tour of the fantastic facilities. 

Overall, 23 faculty members and 15 students and staff members attended the symposium. Lectures were given by both faculty members as well as young investigators, leaving time for general discussions after the talks but also during the breaks and joint meals. This provided ample opportunities for networking and the planning of joint future efforts aiming to further advance the field of fungal biotechnology by common projects but also by potentially new formats of jointly organized Eurasian conferences. The fact that several attendees met in this format already for the second time was highly beneficial in this regard due to the familiarity between the participants, which fostered the collaborative spirit that could be strongly felt in all contributions. By the end of the symposium, all participants agreed that it was a highly motivating meeting with the potential to be empowering for the entire community.