UCL DEPARTMENT OF BIOCHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Staff within the Department's multidisciplinary BiCE programme (Biocatalysis-Chemistry-Engineering interface programme) won the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) Innovation and Excellence Award for Bioprocessing at the end of 2010. The BiCE team, who focus on novel biocatalytic manufacturing routes to speciality chemicals and pharmaceuticals, also received the Royal Society of Chemistry's 2010 Rita and John Cornforth Award in June 2010 for studies at the Chemistry-Biology interface. The leaders of BiCE span three UCL Faculties and include Gary Lye, Paul Dalby, Frank Baganz (Biochemical Engineering), Helen Hailes (Chemistry) and John Ward (Structural and Molecular Biology). Recent staff additions to the team bring in expertise in bioreactor engineering and automation (Martina Micheletti), microfluidics (Nicolas Szita) and synthetic biology (Darren Nesbeth). IChemE CEO David Brown said: "The IChemE Awards are globally recognised and attract entries from all over the world. Winning an award really does demonstrate work of the highest standard and there are plenty of winners from previous years that have used their success at the IChemE Awards as a springboard to greater things." Departmental alumnus Charles Kalama (MEng Biochemical Engineering with Bioprocess Management, 2007) also won the IChemE 2010 Innovator of the Year award.