ITB Hosted The 5th RCBIOTECH

By Shabrina Salsabila

Editor Shabrina Salsabila

BANDUNG, itb.ac.id - Regional Conference on Biotechnology (RCBIOTECH), the biotechnology conference in South East Asia region, was held again for the fifth times on the theme of Biotechnology for Biorefinery. In this year ITB hosted this conference that held at Aston Tropicana Hotel Bandung at Wednesday-Thursday (23-24/01/13). This event was held by the collaboration between Chemical Engineering major from Bandung Institut of Technology (ITB), Gadjah Mada University (UGM), and De La Salle University (DLSU), Phillipine. This event also supported by  ASEAN University Network/ The Southest Asia Engineering Education Development Network (AUN/SEED-Net) and Japan International Cooperation Agency  (JICA).
On the first day, the conference was opened by the greeting speech from Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ronny Purwadi as the head of The 5th RCBIOTECH committee, Ms. Rungchalai Punninda as the ambassador of AUN/SEED-Net, and  Prof. Dr. Hermawan K. Dipojono as The Dean of ITB Industrial Engineering Faculty. After the greeting speech from them, Maha Gotra Ganesha ITB (MGG ITB) performed the Pendet Dance to entertain the conference participant. Then the agenda was continued with the plennary lecture was given by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tatang Hernas from chemical engineering ITB. The plennary lecture was titled Tropical Oil Crop Based Biorefinery. The seconnd plennary lecture was given by Prof. Shiro Saka, Ph.D from Kyoto University about the makingof Bioethanol from Lignocelluloscis which is more ecnomical using the Acetic Acid Fermentation process.
 Appropriate with the purpose of the conference to be a chance to share the result of the biotechnology research, in this conference 57 results of biotechnology research was presented by each country parallelly. This parallel session was divided in to 5 themes, those were Biomass and Bioenergy, Bioproduct and Biomaterial, Bioprocess Engineering, Waste Treatment, and Food Technology. University that joined this conference were Universitas Dipenogoro (UNDIP), Universitas Malaysia (UM), Burapha University from Thailand, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT) from Vietnam, etc.
Moreover some of the research institute like Indonesian Institute of Science also be the presenter in this parallel session. The result of collaboration country research was also presented in this session, for example like the presentation about the application of Jathropa protein in non-food product which is the result from the research of the collaboration between ITB and Wageningen University, Netherlands.
On the last day Prof. Dr. Yasunori Tanji dari Tokyo Institute of Technology presented his plennary lecture about the trial to control the  Staphylococcus aureus bactery that can cause Bovine Mastitis (inflammation in cattle's mammary gland) using the bacteriofag. Prof. Dr. Tjandra Setiadi from ITB was also presenting about his research on the membrane aplication in bioreactor to process various waste water from industry.
"We hope that this conference can connect all of the conference participants so that we can actualize biotechnology development both in Indonesia and around th world togetherly and can open the next collaboration chance," said Ronny.

Photo Source: William Wijaya Gozali