In most of the areas of the CelESTial project, progress was made far beyond the expected results. The first half of the year was largely dedicated to setting up the lines of communication with government institutions and major bioprocessing companies in the region. Multiple visits, brainstorming meetings, and presentations on the progress of the CelESTial project culminated with a of strong financial commitment from the Ministry of Education and Science. A major reason for this is the belief that our initiative will leverage many more millions of Euros in investment and economic activity and have a strong positive effect on the Estonian economy and society. Company representatives also appear to be impressed with our vision, demonstrated by the larger number of companies and industry leaders that are interested in collaborating with the proposed initiative. As a result, we have the strong possibility of becoming a regional hub for this industrial activity, to the benefit of others in the Baltic region. To carry out this outreach to industry players, a personalized and focused approach was chosen: before every visit the company profile was carefully studied by the CelESTial team and personally tailored collaboration projects were proposed. As a result, the ECSB has a clear vision of how to become a self-sustaining scientific center of excellence by providing bio-industries with cell factory based solutions for the sustainable production of needed chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, our work on innovative curricula on industrial biotechnology, synthetic biology and bioengineering during the one-year CSA action was also unexpectedly successful. We have designed a new international master’s program “Bioengineering”, which was entirely devised to train the specialists with skills in industrial biotechnology and bioprocessing, the focus areas of CelESTial. As a result of the project, we have recognized that there is a strong need for a Research Center that would offer innovative solutions in the field of biosustainability. This in turn will have a strong positive impact at both the regional and European levels.
