The European biochemical engineer: Extinct? Endangered? Mutated?

New and emerging technologies and the need to accelerate biopharmaceutical development, reduce costs and achieve a high level of product quality control through in-depth process understanding, are steering today’s Biopharma industry towards highly automated and miniaturized process development, an ever increasing reliance on data management, analysis and use in predictive modeling, as well as towards continuous manufacturing approaches, heavy use of plastic materials, the challenges to predict and resolve cell growth and product behavior under high concentrations and viscosities in the presence of novel excipients and in contact with novel and diverse materials. The need for biochemical engineers able to work in an international multicultural team across geographies is greater than ever. They need to be well prepared to build on both biology and a classical engineering education with a vision towards solving above current and future challenges as well as able to work in very diverse teams spanning multiple time zones. Yet the availability of graduates with a strong grasp of biochemical engineering, mathematics, statistics and modeling principles and having the required soft skills, at least in Europe, seems to be scarce. In this presentation I will give an overview of the situation from the perspective of a mid-size European biopharmaceutical company looking to address today’s challenges while preparing for the future