The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food, and Ministry of Rural Affairs hosted a Bioeconomy Research Highlights Day November 27, 2013 at the Hanlon Convention Centre in Guelph. The scope of this meeting was to discuss ongoing research and progress in the development of Ontario's bioeconomy by bringing together representatives and researchers from universities, government and industry.

Professor Amar Mohanty gave an overview of research activities taking place at the Bioproducts Discovery and Development Centre (BDDC), and participated in a panel discussing the "Challenges of Moving Research into Action". Seven graduate students participated in the poster presentations, with the first place award going to PhD candidate Vidhya Nagarajan for her research on overcoming property trade-offs in polylactic acid biocomposites.