Seaweed solutions looking for problems

About the speaker: 

Dr Johan Svenson is Cawthron’s Science Impact Manager and a natural products and biopolymer chemist whose research has focused on gaining value from nature and has led to advances in the fields of marine natural products, biotechnology, medicinal chemistry, biomaterials and antifouling. Johan has worked in the space of marine natural products for nearly two decades and has spent nine years in the Artic (Norway) bioprospecting for high-value compounds from marine organisms. He later moved on to become research manager (chemistry and materials) at RISE research Institutes of Sweden before being recruited down to Cawthron Institute in New Zealand. Here Johan leads Cawthron’s development of a sustainable New Zealand algae sector by exploring collaborative R&D programmes to enable seaweed aquaculture, generate algal based products and novel bioactives for commercial applications. Johan has extensive experience developing applied research with industrial stakeholders focusing on the growth and valorisation of both seaweeds and microalgae.

Organisation:

Cawthron Institute is New Zealand’s largest independent science organisation. We deliver world-class science that helps to protect the environment and support the sustainable development of primary industries in New Zealand and worldwide. Our near 300 staff focus is entirely on marine and freshwater research with a significant team devoted to aquaculture and realizing the potential of our algal resources.

Presentation:

Seaweed is a fantastic resource with significant potential to tackle some of the challenges and sustainable development goals we are facing today and in the future. That said, seaweed is also quite “buzzy” and hyped as a resource and the current presentation will, from a critical viewpoint, look at some of the new and heralded applications where seaweed could have a significant impact as well as those where the impact is lower.