"Shaping change as positive change for all"

How do designing edible forest gardens, scuba diving, long-distance running, and applied mycology fit together? All of these interests and talents come together in our newly appointed professor, Dr.-Ing. Jakob Hildebrandt, born in 1984 in Werther, Westphalia. Since February 2020, he has been a professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Natural Sciences. His area of expertise at our HSZG encompasses industrial environmental protection and sustainability. “I developed a passion for ecological relationships in the landscape and technical environmental protection at a very early age,” says Hildebrandt. While preparing for his Abitur, he took Environmental Sciences as a subject; the now 35-year-old completed his alternative military service in landscape conservation. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering as part of the International Environmental Engineering degree programme at the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen. While his bachelor’s program had a focus on process engineering, his master’s program in Energy and Material Flow Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Trier focused more on management and Engineering Management.

After completing his Bachelor’s degree, Hildebrandt gained what he describes as “down-to-earth practical experience” at the lower-level environmental protection agency of the City of Cologne. From 2011 to 2013, he worked in this major city as a technical staff member in operational monitoring related to waste, water, and air pollution control, and was responsible for more than a hundred companies that, among other things, work with highly volatile chlorinated hydrocarbon solvents. From this government position, Jakob Hildebrandt then moved to the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig in 2013. As a doctoral candidate and research associate, he conducted research in the Department of Bioenergy, focusing on the material use of biomass, on the topic “Sustainability Index for the Assessment of Value Chains in the Central German Bioeconomy Leading-Edge Cluster.”

From 2016 until last year, Hildebrandt worked as an assistant plant manager and project coordinator in the recycling and humus management sector. There, he was responsible for the planning and operation of biowaste anaerobic digestion and composting facilities at the Gütersloh site in East Westphalia. In 2018, Hildebrandt successfully earned his doctoral degree as a Doctor of Engineering at the University of Leipzig with a comprehensive PhD thesis, while continuing to work in the industry. As part of his PhD thesis, he researched the assessment of the sustainability of the material use of beech wood. Both professionally and personally, Hildebrandt has a keen interest in the recycling of organic substrates. More specifically, he focuses on how an intelligent cascade utilization of biogenic waste and residual materials can be implemented across the entire system—from gardens all the way to the chemical industry. Examples of this include the recycling of materials for energy production—e.g., as biogas—or for soil improvement—e.g., as compost substrates.

Here, too, there is a connection to his training as a specialist consultant in applied mycology—the study of fungi—which he has been pursuing since 2014 and which also focuses on the bioconversion of substrates. In his personal time, he experiments with designing forest gardens—known in English as “food forest design”— —which offers a wide range of future potential, such as the use of starchy fruits as food and animal feed; these can help green cities and contribute to making inner-city landscapes “edible.” “I’m also interested in the mycological relationships in the forest,” says Hildebrandt. “How can fungi heal and help, and what effects do harmful fungi have? For example, in the context of climate change?” Perhaps Mr. Hildebrandt will soon develop project ideas with a few students for designing edible forest gardens—for example, for a private food forest in Zittau. A warm welcome to the HSZG.