Not only new students, but also three new professors - Prof. Dr Eva-Maria Saliu, Prof. Dr Katharina Messerer and Prof. Dr Marcus Schmidt - took up their posts at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE) in September.

Prof Dr Eva-Maria Saliu is now a professor at the Landscape Management and Nature Conservation faculty. She is head of the Department of Ecological Livestock Farming. Born in Augsburg, she grew up on Lake Constance and in Småland, Sweden. Her doctoral thesis at the Institute of Animal Nutrition focussed on multi-resistant bacteria in broilers. She is also a European veterinary specialist in animal nutrition. She dedicated her postdoctoral phase to fibre feeding in pigs at the Institute of Animal Nutrition at the FU. Throughout her doctoral and postdoctoral period, she worked as a veterinarian in nutritional counselling and has been the supervising veterinarian for the Institute's pigs, chickens, cats and dogs since 2019.

She will teach on the Organic Agriculture & Marketing and Organic Agriculture and Food Systems degree programmes. In teaching, she aims to strengthen the desire to generate knowledge and encourage critical thinking. But Ms Saliu is also pursuing goals in research:

"I would like to expand research with intensive laboratory use and embedding in teaching in order to strengthen the visibility of HNEE internationally. When it comes to promoting young talent, I will work hard to promote the networking of Bachelor's, Master's and doctoral theses and the achievement of qualification targets. We will also establish a range of services including feed production, nutritional advice, further training courses and laboratory analyses."

Prof Dr Katharina Messerer is Professor of Forest Economics at the Faculty of Forestry and Environment. She spent her childhood and youth in and around Regensburg. She studied and completed her doctorate at the Technical University of Munich. She then spent five years at AXA Versicherung, where she was responsible for forest insurance for corporate clients. For Ms Messerer, the move to HNEE means a new start at all levels: New city, new federal state and new tasks.

For the time being, she will be teaching on the Bachelor's degree programmes in Forestry and International Forest Ecosystem Management. She will be researching and teaching the economic optimisation of forestry operations, taking risk into account: "In forestry operations management and strategic business orientation and goal setting, I would like to make students aware of the possible consequences of decisions and have them present the results in the form of sensitivity analyses. This can create a close link between research and teaching."

Prof Dr Marcus Schmidt has been appointed Professor of Technologies for the Sustainable Production and Quality Assurance of Plant-Based Foods at HNEE. He comes from near Bautzen in Saxony. While studying food chemistry, he spent an ERASMUS year in Ireland. He completed his diploma and doctoral thesis there. He returned to Germany with a PhD in Food Science and Technology.

At the Max Rubner Institute (Federal Research Institute of Nutrition and Food), Marcus Schmidt set up and headed the carbohydrate analysis working group at the Institute for Cereal Safety and Quality in Detmold as a research assistant. With a focus on food processing and product development, his professorship represents a new aspect of content at HNEE. Food technology principles are used to manufacture products that can contribute to a more sustainable food and agricultural culture.

Marcus Schmidt will initially teach on the new Bachelor's degree programme in Sustainable Food and Agricultural Systems (ErnA). In his research, he will continue to pursue his existing topics. However, he is also planning to add work on plant proteins. It is important to him: "...to provide students with an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary understanding of problems and solutions in addition to scientific principles. This should enable them to adapt to new questions and problems in the future and to develop solutions with the help of the skills they have learnt."

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