Coming soon: UK-India workshop on industrial biotechnology

Enzymes, fermentation, biocatalysis, and bioprocesses are oft-discussed topics under the umbrella of industrial biotechnology. The UK has a lot to offer in this increasingly relevant area for emerging economies such as India which has heightened interest in efficient manufacturing processes.

The UK has several centres of excellence in industrial biotech. For instance, consider the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre based in Glasgow, Scotland. The centre was formed to bridge the technology advancement gap between industry and academia. This will be achieved by de-risking and accelerating the commercialisation of lab scale technologies. The academic members of this consortium include the likes of University of Edinburgh, The James Hutton Institute, and University of St Andrews, amongst others. Then there’s the Centre for Process Innovation catapult. This centre advances early stage concepts in industrial biotechnology to scalable commercial processes. If you’re interested in learning about the UK’s catapult framework, review the information here. In all, there are 11 catapult centres – each focused on a specific domain. Examples include precision medicine catapult, high value manufacturing catapult, and future cities catapult.

There’s a lot of interesting work in industrial biotech going on in India as well. The DBT-ICT Centre for Bioenergy Sciences at the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai is a centre of excellence focused on areas including enzymes, synthetic biology, fermentation, and biofuels. This centre is funded by the Department of Biotechnology.
Given the current capabilities in industrial biotech in the UK and India, it only seems natural that both countries explore bilateral research collaborations. We’re on this! We’ll be organising one-day workshops in Mumbai and Chennai in September 2016. An expert delegation from the UK will be visiting India to promote the UK’s expertise in industrial biotech. If this sounds interesting and you’d like to attend one of these workshops, please send us an email. We’ll keep you posted with the event details in due course.