The Jury

Prof. Dr. Thomas A. Gutzwiller

Prof. Thomas A. Gutzwiller is director of the Executive School of Management, Technology, and Law of the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He is management consultant since 1988. As co-founder of The Information Management Group (IMG), he was until 2006 for 18 years its CEO and, until the accomplished sale of the group the following year, chairman of the board of directors of this global consulting firm with over 700 employees in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, the U.S., Japan, and China. Since 1993 Gutzwiller is visiting lecturer at the University of St. Gallen and since 2006 also at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ). He is lecturing corporate development and technology management. He also heads the Entrepreneurs School at the University of St. Gallen. Gutzwiller serves on following boards: Chairman of the board of directors of Manres AG, the Swiss market leader in management development, vice chairman of IMG, member of board of directors of the St. Galler Kantonalbank Group, a mid-cap PLC listed on SWX in Zurich.

Steffen Klusmann

Steffen Klusmann is editor-in-chief of Financial Times Deutschland (FTD). Following studies in economics, he successfully completed a traineeship at the Georg von Holtzbrinck School of business journalism. He then worked as an editor at Wirtschaftswoche, changing in 1996 to manager magazin. In 1999, the Financial Times Deutschland hired Klusmann. He helped develop the newspaper, which was launched in February 2000. Klusmann then became features editor. In July 2003 Steffen Klusmann returned to manager magazin as deputy editor-in-chief, coming back to the FTD as editor-in-chief on August 1, 2004. FTD was established in 1999 as a joint venture between the German publisher Gruner + Jahr and the British Financial Times Group. The newspaper, which first appeared on February 21, 2000, is now successfully established on the market. According to Media Analyse 2007, FTD, headquartered in Hamburg, has a readership of about 311,000.

Dr. Alfred Oberholz

Dr. Alfred Oberholz is Member of the Executive Board of Evonik Industries AG. He studied chemistry at the Technical University (RWTH) Aachen, where he gained a doctorate. His professional career began in 1980 at the former Chemische Werke Hüls AG (since 1985: Hüls AG) in Marl. In 1994 he took over as head of the Silanes/Silicones Operating Division of Hüls AG, and was appointed in 1998 to the Management Board of Hüls AG, a position that he also held at Degussa-Hüls AG, Frankfurt am Main, and Degussa AG, Düsseldorf. On May 1, 2006, he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Degussa AG (since September 12, 2007: Evonik Degussa GmbH).Dr. Oberholz is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Chemical Industry Fund of the VCI (the Association of the German Chemical Industry) and of the VCI Committee for Research, Technology, and Education. Since 2004 he has been Chairman of DECHEMA, the Frankfurt based Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. In 2007 Dr. Oberholz was elected Chairman of the Board of Governors of the RWTH Aachen.

Prof. Dr. Heinz Saedler

Prof. Heinz Saedler has been director since 1980 of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, where he heads the Department of Molecular Plant Genetics. Since 1981 he has also been honorary professor at the University of Cologne. His work at the MPI focuses on transposons—also known as jumping genes, due to their ability to change position on the chromosome, thus contributing to the genetic variability of organisms—and on molecular analysis of floral architecture. His work has contributed to the establishment of a new subject area concerned with the molecular mechanisms of evolution of morphological novelties, and on biodiversity. His scientific achievements have been recognized with the award of the Otto Bayer Prize in 1985 and the Wilhelm Exner Medal in 2000.

Prof. Dr. Wim Soetaert

Wim Soetaert is professor in industrial biotechnology at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering of Ghent University, Belgium. He previously worked in leading positions in research and development at the German sugar group Pfeifer & Langen and the French starch processing company Chamtor. In Ghent, he is active in the areas of industrial biotechnology, biocatalysis, and fermentation engineering. He is deputy chairman of the Applied Biocatalysis section (ESAB) of the European Federation of Biotechnology and a member of Europabio and SusChem, the European technology platform for sustainable chemistry. He is also the chairman of Ghent Bio-Energy Valley, a public-private partnership that plans to expand the Port of Ghent into the main BioPort of Europe. Prof. Soetaert has received the European Cereal Prize twice, in 1993 and 1998, for his achievements.

Prof. Dr. Philippe Soucaille

Prof. Philippe Soucaille has since 2003 been a member of the Executive Board, with responsibility for Research and Development, of the French biotechnology company METabolic EXplorer based in Saint-Beauzire. He is also a professor at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) in Toulouse, a leading French engineering college. He previously worked at the U.S. biotechnology company Genencor International, where he managed the 1,3-propanediol project, an industrial collaboration that developed a fermentative process for production of 1,3-propanediol. This marked the first time that this chemical was successfully produced from glucose rather than petrochemical raw materials. Since 1996 Soucaille has been a member of the Commission for Evaluation and Funding of Biochemical Research of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Between 1998 and 2000 he was also coordinator of the French Commission for the Promotion and Development of Metabolic Engineering. Since 2004 he has been a member of the editorial board of the periodical Metabolic Engineering. Since 2006 he is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of two US biotechnology companies, Mascoma based in Boston and Amyris based in San Francisco.