EMBARQ

Great discussions, strong teamwork, and plenty of hygge at the EMBARQ Retreat! 🤝

🌱 Reflecting on inspiring days at the Akademie Fresenius Novel Pesticides 2026 Conference in Düsseldorf!✨

Great discussions, strong teamwork, and plenty of hygge at the EMBARQ Retreat! 🤝

🌱 Reflecting on inspiring days at the Akademie Fresenius Novel Pesticides 2026 Conference in Düsseldorf!✨

From research to real-world impact: how do we make the science-policy bridge stronger? 💡

🍅 Can microbes help tomato plants cope with drought?

Follow our activities on LinkedIn

About the Project

From Natural Variation to Real Risk: Modernizing the Safety Assessment of Microbial Bioinoculants

EMBARQ's primary purpose is to provide a knowledge base and develop innovative tools for quantifying the impact of novel biological agents, facilitating rapid assessment methods for industry and regulators.

EMBARQ addresses the need for improved risk assessment of living microbial bioinoculants used in agriculture and environmental management. We aim to fill fundamental knowledge gaps in microbe-environment and microbe-microbiome interactions to predict the impacts of bioinoculant use on human and environmental health and ecosystem services.

EMBARQ will expand traditional risk assessment steps to cover various risk factors, e.g how horizontal gene transfer may affect pathogenicity, and assess environmental impacts.

Download EMBARQ Flyer

We assess the safety and environmental impact of biological solutions for sustainable agriculture and biodiversity.

Bioinoculant innovation is hindered by regulatory frameworks designed for chemicals rather than living microbes. The lack of clear EU guidance on microbial risk assessment, tracking after field application and
inconsistent national implementation creates uncertainty, high costs and delays the safe deployment of biosolutions.

EMBARQ addresses the need for improved risk assessment of novel biological agents used in agriculture and environmental management. These include live microbes – such as biofertilizers, biopesticides and
bioremediation agents – that promote sustainability by reducing reliance on chemical input.

Our vision is to develop complementary and integrative safety and environmental impact evaluation methods in a OneHealth perspective through an interdisciplinary approach, connecting biotechnology, risk assessment and environmental science.

Strategic Roadmap for Research Project

The research project aims to quantify the impact of biological use, track biologicals in the environment using AI, and build a risk assessment framework to enhance safety, sustainability, biodiversity, and ecosystem services.

Impact

EMBARQ will develop recommendations based on research findings to support safer and more sustainable practices.

Hazard assessment

EMBARQ gathers relevant data on factors such as horizontal gene transfer or key microbes.

Microcosm experiments

EMBARQ uses methods such as metagenomics to investigate effects of
perturbation and large scale variation.

In silico validation

EMBARQ investigates geographic and climatic variation using Al, bioinformatics and big data.

Field trials

EMBARQ investigates bioprotection and bioremediation using metagenomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics.

Chemical analysis

EMBARQ employs advanced techniques to provide chemical analyses of metabolites, toxins and bioinoculant by-products.

Our Approach

Tracking biologicals

Pathogenicity assessment

OneHealth perspective

AI & Metagenomic tools

Risk calibration

in natural fluctuation

Meet Research Leaders

Søren J. Sørensen

University of Copenhagen

Soil microbial ecology, horizontal gene transfer

in the environment

Carsten Suhr Jacobsen

Aarhus University

Environmental risk analysis, RNA analysis,

in vivo impact testing

Eva Møller Nielsen

Statens Serum Institut

Human risk analyses, Exposure analysis, national reference, diagnostics

Mads Albertsen

Aalborg University

AI tool development, data analysis, high performance computing

Facilities, institutions and associates

UCPH hosts

CoDoN

EMBARQ shares facilities such as cell sorting and sequencing with the CoDoN - Copenhagen DNA analysis center

Environmental Science

EMBARQ tracks biologicals in the environment from the Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University

Protection from threats

The Statens Serum Institute helps protect agains infectious disease and biological threats

Future proofing with AI bioscience

Environmental AI research based bioscience to protect our future is conducted the Institute for Chemistry and Bioscience, Aalborg University

Scientific Advisory Board

Join Our Research

Together, we contribute valuable insights. Let's collaborate on our research project to drive meaningful change in our community.

Open Positions

There are currently no open positions. However, we welcome opportunities for collaboration, and suitable positions may become available in the future. You are very welcome to contact us to discuss potential opportunities.