Dr Frank Baganz (PI, pictured right receiving ESBES award in 2016) and Gary Lye of UCL Biochemical Engineering have won an Industry Academia Partnership Programme grant (£49k) from the Royal Academy of Engineering to work on a 15 month project entitled ‘On-line MBI® platform as a knowledge sharing strategy between bio-based industry and university in Colombia’. This project is in collaboration with Icesi University, which is pioneering Biochemical Engineering education in Colombia, and Levapan S.A. a leading Colombian IB company.
The overall project aims is to develop, test and evaluate an online Industrial Biotechnology (IB) training module that contains a core of lecture material and will be complemented with specific case studies that can be customised for use by Icesi and UCL. It is envisaged that this unique module will introduce IB platform technologies, process development, tools, and their integration and application into biorefinery designs for sustainable manufacturing. In this module a series of lectures, problem solving case studies and practical demonstrations will be combined and delivered in an online course format. As main outcomes the new dedicated eMBI module can supplement additional face-to-face lectures at Icesi providing strategic learning opportunities for staff in Colombian companies and students. For UCL the experience of developing on-line versions of current modules is a basis for widening the impact of the MBI training programmes.
