Research

BIOPRO World Talent Campus: A week of real world challenge for biotechnology post-graduate students

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Abstract

Focus on sustainable processes and renewable raw materials, combined with rapid advancements in technology developments across scales, makes bio-based production processes a subject of great interest to both industry and academia. Despite this increasing prominence of bio-based production processes, there is a lack of a single course that can provide a thorough overview of the state-of-the-art industrial scale bio-based production, to early stage practitioners and researchers such as post-graduate students. BIOPRO World Talent Campus (WTC), developed and initiated in the year 2013 by the BIOPRO Strategic research consortium, was specifically designed and developed to address this shortcoming, and has thus far trained more than 120 post-graduate students from related yet diverse academic backgrounds from all across the globe. This manuscript describes the general and technical organisation of BIOPRO WTC, and the unique academic and industrial collaboration that exists in Denmark, which makes WTC a reality. A special focus is also placed on discussing a 48 h industrial challenge that is set by leading Danish bio-based production companies and its impact on young post-graduate students, who get hands on experience in dealing with “real world” problems. Results from student surveys carried out during the five years of WTC are reported and discussed to understand the impact of the course. A future perspective is also presented with the focus on the possibility of employing emerging technologies to extend the outreach of the program.