Life Science Talent Talks

In this podcast episode on turning research into societal value, host Søren Spanner Bach is joined by co-host Per Christensen of Black Swans Exist and guests Lasse Rosendahl, Director of CORC, and Alexia Jacobsen, Head of Innovation at CORC - the Novo Nordisk Foundation CO2 Research Center, headquartered in Aarhus with partner institutions across Europe and the US.
The conversation centres on a deceptively simple question:
what does it actually take to translate CO2 research into real-world impact when the value chain you need doesn't yet exist?
Lasse and Alexia walk through the full journey - from TRL 1 microbe experiments exploring how to transform CO2 into methane, to a 200x scale-up pilot facility at Campus Viborg that is already testing market viability by exploring the sale of carbon credits and offtake products at pilot scale.
A key theme throughout is that the TRL ladder is not linear: scaling up consistently surfaces new fundamental questions, sending research back down before moving forward again. Iteration is the design, not the exception.
The bottleneck in commercializing carbon utilization is less about technology maturity and more about the near-complete absence of governmental verification frameworks for CCU and CCC in Europe - and the missing value chains that spin-outs need to survive.
Alexia also introduces CORC's approach to impact measurement: rather than imposing performance indicators that produce what you measure rather than what you want, the team is developing key value measures in direct dialogue with researchers. And critically, the innovation team's role is to remove the administrative and legal obstacles from the researcher's path - so that scientists can stay focused on the science while still contributing to real-world impact.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

01:26 What Is CORC? — Mission, Funding and International Scope
04:11 Why CO₂ Research Matters — And What TRL Actually Means
06:45 TRL in Practice — From Lab-Scale Microbes to Pilot Reactors
10:42 The Real Bottleneck — Value Chains That Don’t Exist Yet

17:13 What Can Industry Do? — Spin-Ins, De-Risking and Ecosystem Building

21:57 Researcher KPIs vs Real-World Impact — How to Navigate Both
25:20 CORC’s Four Mission Streams — Interdisciplinary Design
29:01 Keeping Researchers Mission-Aligned — Annual Meetings and Shared Direction
35:00 What Europe Can Learn from the US — Entrepreneurship and Failure Culture
38:21 Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment — Rethinking Researcher Metrics
41:46 Selling Credits at Pilot Scale — Testing the Market Before It Exists
43:15 Excel ERIC — Sharing Infrastructure Across Europe
45:29 Why Aarhus? — Location, Ecosystem and Production Pipeline
46:41 Impact by 2028 — Technologies Out, Value Chains Built, Knowledge Compounded
50:14 Target Industries and Products — What CORC Is Looking For

💡 QUOTES
"If we are not successful in bringing down atmospheric CO2 levels, it will have consequences — not for the planet, which will survive — but for the way we as humans inhabit the Earth." — Lasse
"If the value chain is not there, we set spin-outs up to fail. That's essentially what we're doing." — Alexia

Ideas for future podcast guests or themes? 💡
We want to co-create this podcast with you. We’d therefore love to hear your suggestions for future podcast guests, ecosystem builders, or deep tech themes.

Feel free to share in a private message or leave a comment below 🙏🏼
(It's also ok to invite yourself 😉)

Call to Action
If this episode sparked your interest:
Share it with someone working in science, startups, or innovation
Follow the miniseries for more conversations with ecosystem builders

Jacob Doktor Mogensen, CEO of Incuba, joins the show to unpack how Aarhus's science park model turns university research into scaled companies.
The conversation moves from Incuba's problem-first, hands-on approach to acceleration, through real cases like Coana and CrowdStrike/Humio, to the harder question of why Danish companies sell out to international capital - and what "spinning in" corporate innovation could change. Listeners get a grounded look at what actually moves a startup from idea to exit.

Episode Timestamps
(09:37) Concrete support: financing, applications, introductions
(10:49) The Investor Hub: proximity that closes deals
(27:26) Success story: Quana's journey and US sale
(41:39) Defining "spin-in" innovation
(46:14) Spin-in success story: CrowdStrike and Humio
(50:01) Turning company problems into student projects
(55:00) Aarhus' innovation ecosystem over the next 10 years

Guest Bio
Jacob Doktor Mogensen is CEO of Incuba, the Aarhus-based science park connecting university spin-outs, established companies, and investors across three hubs. Before Incuba, he spent fifteen years in Danish innovation clusters and science parks, including time in the food industry.

Resources Mentioned
Incuba (Incuba.dk) — science park hubs at Katrinebjerg, Navitas, and Skejby
Incuba on LinkedIn
Coana — Aarhus University spin-out and EU Horizon-funded case study
CrowdStrike / Humio acquisition
Delfinus Venture Capital
InnoFonden, InnoBooster, Horizon Europe funding programs
Startup Aarhus
Aarhus Investor Summit (October 8)

Ideas for future podcast guests or themes? 💡

We want to co-create this podcast with you. We’d therefore love to hear your suggestions for future podcast guests, ecosystem builders, or deep tech themes.

Feel free to share in a private message or leave a comment below 🙏🏼
(It's also ok to invite yourself 😉)

In this podcast episode on turning fragmented world-class research into a connected biosolutions ecosystem, host Søren Spanner Bach is joined by guest Andreas Worberg, the driving force behind the new Center for Biosolutions at DTU (Technical University of Denmark) - a cross-departmental initiative uniting eight departments and close to 2,000 researchers under DTU's non-medical biotechnology efforts.
Andreas shares candid reflections on why DTU, despite ranking as Europe's best engineering university and fifth in the world for biotech, has struggled to make that strength visible and legible to industry, policymakers, and the public - and what the new center is doing to fix it.
Key structural challenges discussed include the internal fragmentation of a large polytechnical university where departments rarely know what their neighbours are working on, a publication-driven incentive structure that pushes researchers toward papers over spin-outs, and years of specialised equipment sitting underused in campus vaults due to legal and liability hurdles around sharing it. Andreas also reflects on the trust-building work required to make collaboration feel like an opportunity rather than a threat to a researcher's own career and turf.
Andreas draws a striking comparison to the arrival of ChatGPT, arguing biotechnology is nearing its own inflection point as AI, quantum computing, and biotech converge - and cautions that businesses investing heavily in AI and quantum while overlooking biotech may be missing where the next wave of disruption actually lands. His closing message: DTU has been playing the long game in biosolutions for years, and now, with a center to make that work visible, Denmark's biosolutions ecosystem is ready to be discovered.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
04:26 Why Biology Is the Next Manufacturing Platform
10:11 Why Commercialization Boosts a Researcher's Academic Footprint
28:06 Closing the Non-Medical Biotech Innovation Gap
32:57 Papers vs. Spin-Outs: You Get What You Measure
34:28 The Biosustain Lesson: Freedom Breeds Entrepreneurs
53:00 The Innovation Pillar: Learning From MIT's Playbook
57:06 Student-Driven Startups vs. Top-Down Innovation

💡 QUOTES
"Large diverse universities... have the challenge that often the right hand does not necessarily know what the left hand is doing." — Andreas

Links:
https://biosolutions.dtu.dk/

Guest Bio
Andreas trained as a biologist, with a doctorate in Germany spanning botany and molecular biology. He spent ten years at a large German engineering company, where he helped design, build, and operate large-scale biochemical plants as its first biologist. He joined DTU in 2017, spending eight years at DTU Biosustain, and today also connects non-medical biotech to defense applications through NATO.

Ideas for future podcast guests or themes? 💡

We want to co-create this podcast with you. We’d therefore love to hear your suggestions for future podcast guests, ecosystem builders, or deep tech themes.

In this podcast episode on turning research into societal value, host Søren Spanner Bach is joined by co-host Per Christensen of Black Swans Exist and guest Morten Engsbye, CEO of Danish BIO (Dansk Biotek) - the industry association representing over 190 pharmaceutical and industrial biotech companies in Denmark. Morten shares candid reflections on why Denmark, despite being Europe's #2 nation for per-capita life sciences publications, consistently underperforms at translating that world-class research into new companies - and what it will take to fix it.
Key structural challenges discussed include the cultural gap between academic excellence and entrepreneurial ambition, the scarcity of early-stage capital as late-stage companies attract the lion's share of investment, and Denmark's 42% capital gains tax making biotech investment unattractive compared to property or neighbouring Sweden. In a world premiere, Morten also unveils Danish BIO's proposal for direct cash grants to university departments that successfully spin out companies - a mechanism designed to make innovation a leadership priority at department level, not just an individual pursuit.
Morten also sounds the alarm on Denmark's GDP dependency on a small number of blockbuster drugs - life sciences now accounts for approximately 60% of all Danish GDP growth - and makes a compelling case for unlocking the country's 4.5 trillion DKK in pension fund assets, currently investing just 0.018% into venture compared to 1.9% in the US. His closing message: Denmark is a life sciences nation in every metric that matters. It just hasn't realised it yet.

TIMESTAMP
00:00 Morten Engsbye and Danish BIO
02:00 The Translation Gap: World-Class Research, Not Enough Companies
03:00 Why Other Countries Are Better at Spinning Out Science
06:00 World Premiere: Danish BIO's Department-Level Spin-Out Incentive Proposal
09:00 Freedom vs Mandates: Why Incentives Beat Obligations
11:00 Genmab, Myelomatosis & What Biotech Success Really Looks Like
13:00 The GDP Time Bomb: When Patents Expire, Markets Collapse
17:00 The Capital Crisis: $2.1 Billion to Bring a Drug to Market
19:00 A Schizophrenic Capital Market: Late-Stage Flush, Early-Stage Starved
20:00 Where Should the Capital Come From? The Draghi & Letta Reports
21:00 Capital Gains Tax: 42% in Denmark vs 27% in Sweden
23:00 Pension Funds: 4.5 Trillion DKK Doing Very Little for Denmark
24:00 The 100x Gap: US vs European Pension Funds in Venture
26:00 Ferrari vs Denmark: One Fund's Investment Priorities
29:00 Forcing vs Incentivising Pension Funds: The Italian Model
30:00 Why It Should Be a Slam Dunk — Jobs, Patients, Returns
34:00 Denmark as a Life Sciences Nation — and Why Politicians Don't See It
36:00 Call to Action for Academics and Department Leaders
40:00 Brain Drain: How Danish Taxpayer-Funded Research Ends Up in Boston

Quote:
"We pay for the research. They build the company here. Then, because there's no capital market, they leave for Boston — pay their taxes there, create all the jobs there. And we sit back holding the bill." — Morten Engsbye

Ideas for future podcast guests or themes? 💡
We want to co-create this podcast with you. We’d therefore love to hear your suggestions for future podcast guests, ecosystem builders, or deep tech themes.

Feel free to share in a private message or leave a comment below 🙏🏼
(It's also ok to invite yourself 😉)

Call to Action
If this episode sparked your interest:
Share it with someone working in science, startups, or innovation
Follow the miniseries for more conversations with ecosystem builders

In this episode, Luuk van der Wielen, Head of BRIGHT (Novo Nordisk Foundation Biotechnology Research Institute for the Green Transition), joins Søren Spanner Bach and Per Christensen from Black Swans Exist in collaboration with Life Science Talent Talks to unpack what it will take for Europe to turn biotech innovation into real, sustainable economic value.
Luuk introduces BRIGHT's core mission: helping Europe reduce emissions, strengthen resource autonomy, and build a more resilient industrial base - not through isolated breakthroughs, but through the kind of system-level change that reshapes technology, supply chains, regulation, incentives, and social behavior all at once.
The conversation draws on powerful historical precedents - Brazil's Proálcool biofuel program and Denmark's biogas infrastructure - to illustrate why lasting green transitions are never built on a single "silver bullet" product, but on coordinated, long-term ecosystem thinking.
Luuk also shares how BRIGHT itself is evolving: moving beyond its Biosustain roots and a science-and-startup model toward more open public-private collaboration, scenario-based "reverse design" roadmaps anchored in 2050 goals, and impact-focused KPIs that go well beyond publications and patents.
The episode explores BRIGHT's three strategic focus areas - sustainable materials, microbial and sustainable foods, and zero-emission agriculture - and what it means to build research infrastructure that is measured by real-world outcomes.
Finally, Luuk issues a direct invitation to potential partners and makes a compelling case for deeper European collaboration and a fairer, continent-wide level playing field for biotech innovation.

⏱️ TIMESTAMP

00:00 Series Kickoff
00:36 Meet Pierre and Black Swans
01:13 Luuk’s Career Journey
04:03 What BRIGHT Does
06:28 Innovation for Green Transition
06:51 Brazil’s Biofuel Lesson
08:52 Systems Change Not Silver Bullets
10:20 BRIGHT’s Origin Story
11:56 From Startups to Partnerships
13:22 Biogas to High Value Proteins
16:04 Key Ingredients for Collaboration
17:42 Sustainable Innovation Office
18:22 Reverse Designing the Roadmap
20:28 Scenario Planning and Outreach
21:37 Tech Plus Policy and Society
22:33 Policy Targets and Autonomy
24:02 Biogas Infrastructure Strategy
26:40 Future Scenarios and Innovations
30:00 Impact Metrics in Academia
34:47 Europe Collaboration and Equity
38:03 Ecosystem Gaps and Level Playing Field
39:48 Bright Partnerships and Missions

💡 Quote:
"Innovation is important in the systems change, but also the regulatory system, the financial system. You don't solve it with one super plastic that comes from BioSolutions. You have to look at the total systems change." - Luuk van der Wielen

Ideas for future podcast guests or themes? 💡

We want to co-create this podcast with you. We’d therefore love to hear your suggestions for future podcast guests, ecosystem builders, or deep tech themes.

Feel free to share in a private message or leave a comment below 🙏🏼
(It's also ok to invite yourself 😉)

Call to Action
If this episode sparked your interest:
Share it with someone working in science, startups, or innovation
Follow the miniseries for more conversations with ecosystem builders