Dori Zantedeschi – DDRN

ELLS student conference – connecting life science students, sharing research

Dori Zantedeschi — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 13:32:48 +0000

There are many opportunities for European and non-European students to travel around in Europe and in the world to meet other students and different realities. In this article I am going to talk about one of these meeting opportunities, namely a student conference for students in life science educational programs being part of ELLS.

ELLS, what it is, what it does

ELLS stands for Euroleague for Life Sciences. ELLS is a network of seven European universities offering summer schools, joint degree programmes, study abroad opportunities and cooperation on the Ph.D. level. The network organizes a student conference once a year, and if you are wondering what it is and what you normally do at a student conference, stay tuned. First, you might like to know which universities are members of the Euroleague, and here is the list:

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna
Copenhagen University, Faculty of Science
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala
University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart
Wageningen University and Research Centre
Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague
Warsaw University of Life Sciences

ELLS has also some partners outside Europe with which they have bilateral agreements for sending student for an exchange semester:

China Agricultural University, Beijing
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Lincoln University, New Zealand

The Euroleague was founded in 2001, aiming at making the students of the member universities feeling at home in those countries also regarding job searching. In fact, there are many students who come from other parts of Europe and from outside Europe, as I could witness during the 2019 student conference.

The 11th edition of the ELLS Student conference

The 11th edition of the conference it took place on 15-16 November 2019, in Uppsala, Sweden, with the title “Managing Broad Environmental Interests in a Sustainable World”. I remember my excitement when I participated in my first ELLS student conference in 2017, in Copenhagen. That was also my first attendance to a conference ever. In 2019, in Uppsala I was there as a reporter for DDRN, and next year, in Vienna, who knows, maybe I will be one of the students presenting.

What is it like to take part in a student conference? On the first morning, you arrive, you register, and you get a tag to pin on you. Then you follow all the other students who know the way, to a big auditorium, where you receive a welcome speech from the organizers introducing the conference and announcing next year’s venue, and afterwards, some talks by two former students about their current work: Bojana Bajzelj presented her research about sustainable diet, food waste reduction, the climate impact of food system and related scenarios to 2050. Jens Thulin talked about taking over his family meat farm business and transforming it into a sustainable and climate smart farm.

The program of the conference is very tight, comprising of oral and poster presentations. The presentations occur at the same time in different rooms. Fortunately, in each room, they have grouped the presentations related to a common subtheme in order to guide you. You are provided also with an app where you can find all the abstracts of the presentations, time and venue, so that you have a clearer idea whether to choose something under “Solutions for an urban ecosystem” rather than “Green entrepreneurship”, or under “Innovations in the food chain” rather than “The future use of natural resources”. The presentations end in the afternoon, and then later there is a social dinner and the party.

After the long night, the next day can be tough, but free coffee is there to support you to take advantage of the last presentations. The closing of the conference sees the award ceremony, in which, among other things, the best presentations in each subtheme receive a price.

I had the opportunity to listen to talks about solutions to reuse wastewater through the use of green roofs, the mobility of microplastic in soils, interesting facts about citizen science, services to mechanize agriculture in Zambia and more. The conference is a great way to network with other students, get updates about recent research topics, learn something new, since the life sciences are so broad, practice to present, feel part of something and have fun!

In the following articles you will get to know three of the non-European students who are studying at the member universities of the Euroleague. I can’t wait to introduce you to Musa Bishir, Danilo Crispim Massuela and Rayan Kassem.

Dori Zantedeschi is a Master student of Environmental Science in Europe, University of Copenhagen

Bojana Bajzelj’s presenting

Bojana Bajzelj

Jens Thulin

“In Africa millions of people lack access to stable electricity”. Musa Bishir is on the quest for a change

Dori Zantedeschi — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 13:28:38 +0000

During the ELLS Student Conference 2019, in Uppsala (see article), I had the opportunity to attend Musa Bishir’s presentation about his Ph.D. research project on microbial fuel cells. After his presentation, I asked him if he was available to have a talk about his background and interests. We sat in the library in Ultuna campus, (the conference’s venue), which is part of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).

From Africa to Europe

Musa Bishir comes from the north-west part of Nigeria, from a village called Bakori. After completing his primary and secondary education, he moved to Zaria, about 75 km from Bakori, to study microbiology at Ahmadu Bello University. As soon as he finished his first degree he was employed as a teacher at the same university, where he is still a lecturer. In 2016, he finished his Master degree. Immediately, Musa Bihir started his Ph.D. at the same university. In 2017, he was suggested to apply for a scholarship by a colleague, and one of his former lecturers. He followed her suggestion and he won the scholarship from PTDF, the Petroleum Technology Development Fund, who has a partnership with DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service. Since it was a governmental scholarship, he had to be granted permission from his home university to study abroad. Therefore, he signed a bound to come back after the completion of the Ph.D. and he moved to Stuttgart, at Hohenheim University. He is currently working on proposals to continue with a post-doctoral research anywhere in Europe, and why not even in Denmark?

The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) aims at creating high qualified Nigerian graduates in the field of the gas and oil industry, who, through research and adaptation of technology, can develop the industry. It does so by developing and upgrading local institutions that train and educate Nigerian, making available books and training equipment in these institutions, sponsoring visits to the oil fields, financing and participating in conferences and seminars about petroleum industry and finally, providing scholarships. PTDF offers one scholarship to study in Nigerian universities, and one to study abroad called: “Overseas postgraduate scholarship scheme under PTDF strategic partnerships in France, Germany, China and Malaysia”. In his application process, Musa had to include a Ph.D. proposal relevant to the oil and gas industry, stating the expected development impact on the national development, the viability of the research plan and an admission letter from the receiving university. Musa got accepted in Stuttgart, working in team with his project supervisor, Andrea Kruse.

How to make an already existing technology sustainable and cheap

“Characterization of biogas digestate and corncob developed carbon electrodes used in microbial fuel cells”. This is the title of Musa’s research. Difficult to even grab the topic if you are not in the field, but let’s take one step at a time. Microbial fuel Cell (MFC) is a technology to produce electrical current using bacteria in wastewater. So instead of consuming energy to treat wastewater, we use wastewater as a power plant. “Wastewater is already rich in bacteria, like the one digested from biogas plants, so you don’t need to collect, or to add bacteria, they are already there”, Musa explained me.

Here is how it works (picture in the sidebar). Two chambers filled with wastewater are needed. One of the chambers is sealed so it cannot get access to oxygen and contains an anode. The second chamber contains a cathode and it is exposed to oxygen. Microbes in wastewater such as bacteria, adhere to the anode and, without oxygen, oxidize the organic matter present in wastewater to produce electrons (e^–), protons (H⁺) and carbon dioxide (CO₂). The protons are free to pass from anode to cathode through the membrane that separates the two chambers. The electrons flow through an electric meter to the cathode. The flow of electrons generates electric current used for any utility. In the cathode chamber, microorganism use electrons to reduce the oxygen into water, or convert nitrate to nitrite or N₂, or convert CO₂ to acetate.

This technology is already a reality, but Musa and his team’s research try to make a step forward: they aim at finding more sustainable and cheap material to produce the electrodes, which now are made of graphite at a prohibitive cost. They came up with the idea of using corncob which is a farm waste material otherwise left on land or burnt producing CO₂ emissions. Through the pyrolysis (thermal decomposition of organic material at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen) of corncobs they obtained a material with very good properties to be an electrode: high surface area for the colonization of the electrogenic bacteria, reliable stability in structure, and high electrical conductivity (read abstract in ELLS Scientific Student Conference 2019, p.38). “This gives a better application of this material over graphite, which is even expensive. And the good thing is that it is not only corncob biomass, nearly from all biomass you can produce this electrode material”, adds Musa.

Building up an interest

I ask Musa how he got the interest in this field. He tells me that he first got fascinated by microorganisms because “we use microorganisms to produce valuable products to mass economic benefit, like in the production of bread, beer and wine, in biogas production”. This brought him to study microbiology in his bachelor with a thesis about biogases. During his post-degree he got interested in applying microorganisms or their products in industry. His master degree was about glutamic acid production, which, he explains me, is “an essential amino acid, because we cannot synthesized it in our system, but it is used in many industries as a flavour enhancer, and it increases neurologic response, because it is a neurotransmitter”.

When he started his Ph.D. in Nigeria, he wanted to work on enzymes production of tannase, an inducible enzyme produced by a variety of microorganisms and used in the treatment of wastewater contaminated with tannins ^[1]. At Hohenheim University though, he found himself working on developing carbon material for microbial fuel cells, which still deals with wastewater, but from a different angle. “I am very happy for this topic, because it allows me to apply my knowledge about industrial microbiology in agriculture”.

Suppling good water and electricity at the same time

The microbial fuel cell from biomaterial has many applications, as Musa explains me: “you can use them as soil amendment agent, as electricity generation, you can use them in biogas generation, you can even use them in the production of super capacitor in making car batteries so instead of having fossil fuels in our cars, which increases the emissions, we can have rechargeable electric cars, whose batteries are made from this biomass material”. It really seems the solutions to many problems, but there is something that Musa has considered only recently after that somebody at a conference pointed out the issue to him: the CO₂ emissions from the microbial fuel cell is less compared to the combustion reaction, but still they are present, therefore pose a problem as Musa says: “we are trying to clean the environment by providing a substitute for the fossil fuel but at the same time you are also generating carbon dioxide, which is a problem”. He came up with the idea of capturing the carbon dioxide by plants in greenhouses, but the issue is still not solved.

Regarding his personal future prospect, would Musa be glad to go back to Nigeria to implement this technology? Yes, he says, Nigeria or in Africa at large. “In most African countries, unlike Europe, millions of people lack access to stable electricity and that is why most of our industries are not functioning. At the same time, rural areas are suffering from access to good water supply. We can establish the fuel cell in our wastewater treatment and at the same time produce some electricity instead of requiring electricity for aeration of activated sludge system that are commonly used in wastewater treatment”. The investments and the facilities are a problem though, so for now he is planning to stay in Europe to continue with his post-doctoral research and find some partnership with Europe and some funding that can allow him to implement the technology in Africa.

Studying in Europe

Lastly, Musa tells me about his experience in Europe. Being his first time in Europe, everything is new and very different from his country, but the economic strength and the regulation policies of Europe are not comparable to the ones in Nigeria. Therefore, in his opinion, there is access to good facilities and equipment everywhere around Europe. “In Hohenheim, I have access to whatever I need anytime I want to do an experiment, I have the equipment, I have the facilities, I have access, so I will do it. Back in Nigeria sometimes you would be limited by availability of facilities so you have no chance in doing that”, even though the teachers and professors in Ahmadu Bello University are very motivated and encourage students a lot, something that Musa appreciates very much about his home university.

^[1] C.N. Aguilar, C. Augur, E. Favela-Torres, G. Viniegra-Gonzales (2001). Production of tannase by Aspergillus Niger Aa-20 in submerged and solid-state fermentation: influence of glucose and tannic acid. Journal of Industrial microbiology and biotechnology, Nature publishing group.

Dori Zantedeschi is a Master student of Environmental Science in Europe, University of Copenhagen

Musa Bishir presenting at ELLS 2019

Changing the diet nationally affects water globally

Dori Zantedeschi — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 13:28:07 +0000

In November 2019, I was attending the ELLS Student Conference 2019, in Uppsala (see article) at Ultuna campus of the Swedish Agricultural University (SLU). Along with listening to students’ presentations, I was catching up with some friends that are part of the same double degree program as mine called Environmental Science in Europe (EnvEuro), but that I don’t have the opportunity to see often, since we study in different universities. The ELLS conference has been for the last two years a fixed appointment for meeting each other. One of my friends is Rayan Kassem, who was giving a presentation called “The water footprint of Denmark for different diets”. Afterwards, he made himself available in the library for a little interview with me about his research project.

University path

Rayan Kassem comes from Lebanon. He studied Environmental Science as a bachelor’s degree in Balamand University, about 20 km south of Beirut. He was searching online for master’s degree programs in Europe that could interest him, when he came across the double degree program of EnvEuro. Students enrolled in this program study at two universities of their choice out of the four partner universities: University of Copenhagen (KU), Boku University (Vienna), SLU (Uppsala) and Hohenheim University (Stuttgart). Rayan chose to spend his first year at Boku University and his second year, that includes the final thesis project, in Denmark, in the University of Copenhagen.

Many environmental issues, not much research

“Lebanon has a lot of environmental issues, most importantly connected with wastewater and droughts”, Rayan explains me as a premise to my question about where his interest in the environment comes from. He continues: “In our houses, for 4 months a year we lack twenty-four hours supply of sanitary clean water”. And in fact, according to the report made by Verner et al (2018)[i], Lebanon have dry hot summers with temperatures that vary between 30 and 40°C, which corresponds to a period of water scarcity. According to the same report, drought risk in Lebanon is increasing on one hand because of climate change, and on the other hand because of increasing water supply pressures in cities due to population growth, urbanization and industrial activities. On top of that, Lebanon is facing challenges regarding the contamination of urban water supplies, while the investments in water infrastructures are limited[ii]. This issue caught Rayan’s attention and made him want to dig into the problem. Therefore, he chose to study environmental science, to understand how the environment works, and maybe find solutions. After his bachelor, he decided to come to Europe to study his master, because at home, he could have chosen between three specializations only, namely forestry, fishery and coastal zones, while he wanted to focus on droughts, water, and climate change. “Environmental studies in Lebanon are very young, not very advanced, and there are not even so many people enrolling in them, so I wanted to come to Europe to learn from the experience of researchers and professors here”.

Different diets have different water footprints

Then, we shift the topic of the interview to his thesis research. “My research is about the effect of the diet we consume related to the consumption of water resources in the country we live in and also in the countries we import food from”, he starts. He has been working together with associate professor Martin Rudbeck Jepsen, from the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management at KU, and Professor Stefan Petrus Salhofer, from the Institute for Waste Management at Boku University. In his work, Rayan took into consideration the Danish average diet (very rich in animal-based products) and compared the water footprint of this diet with three more: the diet recommended by EAT-Lancet Commission, and then the Danish average and the EAT recommended, but replacing meat with insects. Before going to what Rayan found out, here are some premises about what EAT is and what a water footprint is. EAT is a global, non-profit start-up, that brought together scientists in nutrition, health, sustainability and politics in order to find a healthy diet that, if applied by everyone, could feed a future population of 10 billion people within the earth boundaries. The water footprint is “the amount of water used to produce each of the goods and services we use”[iii] from clothes, to food, to anything. Rayan’s theory was that the EAT recommended diet could also save more freshwater. In fact, he demonstrated that if Danish people would change diet, they would decrease their water footprint by the 26%. While if they would replace the meat products with insects, the water footprint would be only 4% less (see figure in sidebar). This makes the shift to EAT diet, which is mainly plant-based, preferable over the other ones considered.

The water is globalized

Rayan told me how his research can make people more aware of their food choices. “People don’t have a very detailed knowledge about food, so it’s nice to see which foods in your diet are affecting the most the water consumption and which are not”. Something I ignored, and Rayan assures that the majority of people do, is that sugar have a high water footprint, as shown in the pie chart below, while I already knew that meat had a high impact. Rayan follows up: “when they read the study, each person can decrease the litres of water they use contributing to reducing the consumption of water on a national level. It’s a very solution-oriented research that could be applied right away by individuals, so you don’t need government policies, you can do it yourself”. Anyway, there are some limitations. The first one is that the diet depends on the geographical area the people live in, as Rayan is well aware of: “the diet that I recommend resembles the plant-based diet, but when you move up north, those foods are difficult to find compared to the Mediterranean or the tropics”. This is historically true, but nowadays globalization makes everything possible, as Rayan thinks. The second limitation in his study is that he does not know where the water is coming from: “when I say that by applying this diet, Denmark would save 26% of water, the water saved comes from all the food that they import from around the world. So, it might be 2% from Denmark, 13% from Angola and 11% from Venezuela”. And for him this is something very interesting to consider, because often people would ask him why Denmark should care about saving water, since it is not a problem here, instead of focusing on greenhouse gases emissions i.e. And here is what Rayan replies: “we need to look at water in a global context, not in a local one. When I sell you a food item, I am also selling you the water I used to produce this food”. He also adds that most of the studies he cited in his thesis agree on the fact that a shift in the diet is necessary.

Lebanon is not a good option now

Rayan is now back in Lebanon, but he wants to come back in Europe for a PhD or for a job. For a PhD he would like to specialize in droughts now, and in Lebanon this specialization doesn’t exist. In fact, he says that the professor’s specializations cover only three topics: forestry, fishery and coastal zones. The opportunities to get a job in the environmental field are also minimal because “there are a lot of environmental issues to solve but no one wants to work on them, there is no funding, there are no professors that tell you: come and work with me”. For this reason, he would need to find a job in a country that care about the environment and do research about that. “If I want to advance in this environmental sector going back home would not be a good option”. He tells me that the scarcity of actual jobs makes it very hard to be employed by someone in his field of interest, but with four or five years of experience or with a PhD, then he would have the necessary qualifications to go back and start something on his own.

Studying in Denmark compared to Lebanon

Finally, Rayan tells me that what he loved about University of Copenhagen (KU) is the variety of topics he could chose, and the knowledge that professors had. “At KU they don’t waste a lot of time teaching what I call the anti-knowledge, namely some unnecessary vague information about one topic. They go straight to the point in the courses”. He also mentioned the attention that his supervisor at KU gave him compared to the one he got in Lebanon, so that he was able to improve a lot during his thesis. This is something he is looking forward to, if he can get a PhD in Europe again.

[i] D. Verner, M. Ashwill, J. Christensen, R. McDonnell, J. Redwood, I. Jomaa, M. Saade, R. Massad, A. Chehade, A. Bitar, D. Treguer (2018). Droughts and Agriculture in Lebanon: Causes, Consequences, and Risk Management. World Bank Group. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328751357_Droughts_and_Agriculture_in_Lebanon_Causes_Consequences_and_Risk_Management

[ii] EAT website. Retrieved from: https://eatforum.org/

[iii] Water footprint network website. Retrieved from: https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/what-is-water-footprint/

Dori Zantedeschi is a Master student of Environmental Science in Europe, University of Copenhagen

The Danish water footprint of consumption for different diets. The reference is the Danish average diet

Source: Rayan Kassem. Click for larger graph.

The total water footprint (in m³/cap/yr) of different diets for Denmark sorted in % per food category The reference (REF) is the average Danish diet.

Source: Rayan Kassem. Click for larger graph

Being a Quilombola farmer and being considered a drug dealer

Dori Zantedeschi — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 13:27:33 +0000

In November 2019, I was In Uppsala for the ELLS Student Conference (see article), organized by Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Ultuna campus. On the second and last day of the conference, I went to Danilo Crispim Massuela’s poster presentation. I like poster presentation, because the atmosphere is more familiar since you stand all around the poster and the presenter. After his very good presentation, I asked Danilo if he had some spare time to answer a few questions. So, we sat just outside the classroom when everybody had left.

From engineering to agriculture

Danilo Crispim Massuela comes from Brazil. He studied Food Engineering in his bachelor at Mauá Institute of Technology in São Paulo. During his bachelor he was granted a scholarship from the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology called Science Without Borders to study one year in a European university. He sent many applications, and he got accepted at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in south-east Germany. He was thrilled to study in Germany because the country has a good reputation regarding engineering.

When the year in Germany was over, he went back to Brazil to finish his bachelor and afterwards, he worked as a sales developer for two years. However, he missed Germany and he missed being in an international environment where people from all over the world interact and collaborate together. Therefore, he decided to start a master program in Germany. He chose Hohenheim university in Stuttgart, because there was a program called “Agricultural Sciences in the Tropics and Subtropics” which he was interested in. So, he jumped from engineering for his bachelor to agriculture for his master. The change of interest came already when he was doing the literature research for his bachelor thesis about edible insects. He came across many papers addressing the problem of hunger: “I am a food lover, and coming from Brazil that is a country where a lot of people do not have food, or food is insecure, it was something that was very touching for me”. To come across this problem, gave him the motivation to go from food engineering to agriculture, to know what it takes to produce food before modifying it. The master at Hohenheim university, focused on tropical regions, smallholder farmers and subsistence agriculture, suited his interest very well.

Cannabis farmers are poor and marginalized

Most of the people are lost when it comes to pick a topic for their thesis, but Danilo had already at least two starting points: he wanted to write about his home country, and he was interested in traditional communities. The research-of-papers phase that came right after, unearthed the lack of publications about some particular indigenous populations called Quilombolas, who live in the Brazilian Sertão (figure below), the semi-arid hinterlands in the north-east part of the country. This is the poorest region in Brazil and the biggest producer of cannabis in Brazil. Danilo then had an interest himself for the cannabis plant since “it is not an ordinary plant, it has a lot of purposes, and now it is really a trend that governments and countries put this into discussion, debating about legalizing, regulating, which I think it is very important”. The master thesis topic was set, and Danilo spent one month in the Sertão, together with the Quilombolas communities conducting a social investigation about the possibility of replacing cannabis production for narcotic use, with legal plantations of hemp.

Quilombolas communities have a history of marginalization and racism, because they are a rural minority descending from slaves, and, since the area is subject to drought, they are exposed to food insecurity and famine. They cultivate cannabis for subsistence, which cause violence and police persecution; it also causes damage to the environment. On the other hand, other crop alternatives are hindered by large intensive agribusiness, against which the traditional smallholder Quilombolas farmers cannot compete. All these factors cause marginalization, social injustice and deprivation of constitutional rights of land, water and food for the Quilombolas communities.

Not an easy investigation

Danilo had to move carefully in the Quilombolas communities, because their history of marginalization has caused violence and danger. Before being able to interview some of the members, he had to build trust with them. “Many family members are in jail, or some family members are dead, so you have this very sensitive topic about cannabis that people do not want to talk about”, Danilo explains. Anyway, once they understood that Danilo was not a cop, that he would not create problems to them, they collaborated. But still some questions were so sensitive for them, that they refused to be recorded, and Danilo respected their choice, even though he ended up having a lot of information off record that he could not use. This made the analysis of the data very challenging.

I was told this episode occurred to Danilo during the trust-building phase where he spent a lot of time with them just doing when they did. That day he went fishing with them, and after cooking and doing the dishes he stayed over for the night. The next morning, he noticed blood stains on the doorsteps which made him worried that it could be a sign of unwelcome. He was told that the blood belonged to a dog with an injured paw who had slept on the doorsteps, but the explanation did not dissolve his concern.

The government can make a difference as well as changing the management

Those communities were able to decrease their dependency from the narcotic traffic thanks to the governmental programs for agricultural development and public policies such as “Zero Hunger” which include “Bolsa Família”. The latter is a government program introduced in 2003. It provides that low income families receive cash transfer “on the condition that they, for example, send their children to school and ensure they are properly vaccinated”^. This helped the Quilombolas to be food secure, but on the other hand, it made them highly dependent from the governmental grant. And this turns out to be a risk especially nowadays, as, Danilo tells me, “governmental programs are facing budget cuts, result of the neoliberal ecocide-agenda”.

That is why Danilo’s research conclusion is to apply a different management on the same crops to produce instead seeds, leaves and fibres, and that the state is key to lead to the transition from narcotic to industrial hemp. In fact, the state could start a cooperation with the communities to produce food or construction material if they would suggest them other uses of hemp. “It was funny to know that they did not have the idea that the plant could be used in other ways, they never thought to use the leaves to feed the goats, or harvesting the seeds creating oil. For them it was for narcotic use”, Danilo tells me. And indeed, from the interviews it emerged clearly that the communities are not interested in growing cannabis because of all the troubles they have. But they do so mainly when no land-water is available and/or crop failure occurs. Therefore, the members interviewed, stated that they were willing to shift to hemp if this is legal.

Planning to be part of the government

In November, Danilo started his PhD in Hohenheim, which came as a follow-up to his master thesis. The topic will be more into nature science than social sciences, since he will investigate the performance of cannabis for medicinal use in collaboration with the institute of crop sciences. He has not lost interest in the social aspect, and after the PhD he sees himself working with the development of marginalised, food insecure threatened communities. He states: “it is not so clear what my path will be, but I would like to go to the government so that I really have the chance to have an impact. I saw that the governmental program that was applied changed the life of those people, and then I could have bigger amount of resources and possibilities to have an impact”.

He also mentions that he is willing to be part of the Brazilian government in order to have a positive impact on the corruption and bad management still present. I asked Danilo if he thinks that his PhD results could positively affect the Quilombolas communities, or any other community that rely on cannabis to subsistence. He hopes so, especially after having witnessed the ignorance of the Quilombolas about other uses of the cannabis plant and how their life could change in shifting to hemp crop. Even though the experiment will be carried out indoor and outdoor in Germany, a country he really likes for the open-minded education system, for the many opportunities of collaboration that there are and for the very low university fees, the findings can be applied also in other countries.

Dori Zantedeschi is a Master student of Environmental Science in Europe, University of Copenhagen