Fostering young talent
Chemist Guido Heinrich evaluates medication and young researchers
Some things you just never forget. Like that test kit used to detect traces of blood in food. Back then, the initial question was: how can vegetarians be sure that there is no meat on their plate? The solution was found by a group of young women. ‘It was worthy of being patented,’ says Guido Heinrich. ‘I am so often fascinated by the ingenuity of young researchers.’
The 57-year-old PhD chemist has been dedicating a portion of his spare time to up-and-coming scientific talent since 2003, acting as one of three jurors from his field at ‘Jugend forscht’, Germany’s most well-known young science competition. This gave him a reason to visit the Technology Park Adlershof at least once a year, every February at Bunsen Hall on Volmerstrasse, to be exact. There, young scientists taking part in the region-level competition for south Berlin present their projects to his critical eye.
Heinrich spent most of his professional career on the other side of Adlergestell, the main road separating the old from the new Adlershof, at a pharmaceutical company that was based in Adlershof when today’s Technology Park was still a thing of the future. Located on Glienicker Weg and founded in that exact spot in 1890, Berlin-Chemie-AG hails back to the company Kahlbaum Laborpräparate, which has survived five systems of government since then and countless name and ownership changes.
It was merged with the Schering Corporation in 1927, became nationalised in 1949 as VEB Schering, and renamed VEB Berlin Chemie in 1956. Its main source of revenue was and still is insulin, the life-saving substance for people with diabetes. ‘We were the only East German company always in the black,’ says Heinrich, ‘we provided the entire Eastern bloc with insulin.’
Guido Heinrich is a native of Berlin-Friedrichshain. After studying chemistry in Merseburg, he landed a job as a control engineer for welding electrodes at the electric cable factory ‘Kabelwerk Oberspree’ in Schöneweide. Two years later, he started working for VEB Berlin-Chemie, where he witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the privatisation of the company in 1992. Formerly owned by ‘the people’, it was taken over by the Menarini Group, Italy’s biggest pharmaceutical company. Its product range now includes cardiovascular drugs; the company also conducts cancer therapy research.
Since 1998, Heinrich has been a team leader for stability testing of innovative drugs: ‘We examine how long a drug can be stored, which route of administration, such as tablets or fluids, are well-tolerated and for how long.’ The coronavirus pandemic has not yet changed the rhythm of his everyday work: ‘I am still at the office. Just like always.’ After all, as a pharmaceutical firm, Berlin-Chemie is very much part of the ‘critical infrastructure’. Should the supply of diabetes or cardiovascular medication come to a standstill, this would ‘hit the population twice as hard,’ says Heinrich.
He takes the bike from Mahlsdorf to work out of conviction, every morning for seven-and-a-half kilometres and back in the evening.
His volunteering work doesn’t stop at ‘Jugend forscht’. Heinrich is the head of the state-level groups of the Verband Angestellter Akademiker (VAA), a managerial association for academics in the chemical industry, where he is responsible for 2,500 members in all German states, and co-organiser of a church-run homeless café. At home, he enjoys handling the hammer and plane. And recently added a dining table for his daughter to his inventory.
By Winfried Dolderer for Adlershof Journal