ESBES – ACS BIOT collaboration

The design Challenge for this Third ESBES-BIOT Competition

This design challenge involves the design of a commercial manufacturing facility for the "Continuous production of lentivirus for use in gene and/or cell therapy products", including upstream, downstream and formulation and fill processing.

Unlike the first two editions of the competition, the problem statement is being made available to instructors of undergraduate and graduate design courses (in the EU and US). Student teams in these courses can use their coursework to comprise the report they submit for this competition. Diversity in team composition (i.e. schools, countries and continents) will still be rewarded by project reviewers/judges, but less so than in the past two contests.

Please contact Dr. William J. Kelly () if you would like to register a team and then receive a copy of the detailed project description.

Teams have four months after they register to work on the project and submit their report and short video. Up to three students from each of the top finalist teams will have reasonable travel expenses paid for by ESBES-BIOT to attend the ESBES meeting in Portoroz, Slovenia (September 2020) to present their design cases for the final stage of the competition.

BIOT ESBES Graduate Student Design Challenge 2019-20
Please click here for further information: Challenge Overview and Rules

2^nd ESBES-BIOT Design Competition

The second ESBES-BIOT Biotechnical Design Competition culminated in a showdown between two truly international teams at the Orlando meeting last month. The idea for the competition was conceived by a group of ESBES and BIOT representatives who met in 2016 to discuss ways that the two organizations can work together. The first competition finals were then held in Barcelona in September of 2017. With the emergence of Cell Therapies as an important sector for ESBES and BIOT, the goal of the project for this second competition was to design a process for the production of clinical grade cartilage grafts. Travel expenses for the two top teams were covered thanks to the generous sponsorship of Johnson and Johnson, Medimmune, Novo Nordisk and Aine Hanly (2019 Perlman award winner). The first team was composed of Yi Liu and Chin-Yuan Tseng from Georgia Institute of Technology (USA) and Yen-Hong Lin from China Medical University (Taiwan, ROC). The second and winning team (see photo) was composed of Monica Moreno Gonzalez and Mario Gustavo Lopez Gomez from Delft University (the Netherlands) and Sean Madsen from Tulane University (USA). The problem statement for the next (3^rd) ESBES-BIOT competition will be posted in June of 2019 with the topic being continuous bio-manufacturing and the finals event to be held in Portoroz Slovenia in September of 2020.

BIOTECH DESIGN COMPETITION 2018

Topic for 2nd Competition
The 2nd ESBES-BIOT Biotechnical Design Competition topic has been chosen, and it is: "Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells for Clinical Applications".

Team Formation
Team formation begins on Feb 1, 2018 for the 2nd ESBES-BIOT Design Competition (please spread the word to your fellow graduate students!). The first step in team formation is to post your CV or bio as soon as possible, to advertise your skills and that you looking for a team, on the competition Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/271786583176635/).

Please see the description of the competition rules and structure.

BIOTECH DESIGN COMPETITION 2017 / VIDEO

Please watch this video:

It describes the Finals event for the recently concluded 1st ESBES-BIOT design competition and it also provides important information for the upcoming 2nd competition.

BIOTECH DESIGN COMPETITION 2017

The first annual Biotechnical Design Competition is organised by the European Society for Biochemical Engineering Sciences (ESBES) in cooperation with the American Chemical Society's Biochemical Technology Division (ACS-BIOT).

The competition this year will allow master and postgraduate students from the United States and Europe to work together on a current problem facing the Biopharmaceutical industry. The solutions will be judged by a panel of faculty and industrial scientists, and the top three teams will present their solutions at the September 2017 ESBES meeting in Barcelona, Spain.

Six teams, composed of three graduate students each, recently submitted their reports for this first competition. Seven of the eighteen participating students were from the USA, and six countries were represented in total. The names of the three Finalist teams will be announced at the upcoming ACS meeting in San Francisco. These three teams will receive support to travel to the 2017 ESBES meeting in Barcelona Spain to compete in a "Finals" competition. We would like to recognize all of the eighteen graduate students who worked so hard on their projects and were the "pioneers" for this first annual competition.

Students who participated in the 1st (2017) BIOT-ESBES Biotechnical Design Contest

Team 2

Maria João Jacinto, IST Portugal
Kelsey O’Donell, Villanova University, USA
Abhinav Jain, Tulane University, USA

Team 4

Ruchir Ravindra - Technical University of Dortmund, Germany
Victor Koppejan, TU Delft, the Netherlands
Marieke Klijn, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

Team 5

Jhuwala Venkatakrishnan from University of Cincinnati
Klaus Pellicer Alborch from TU Berlin
Nuria Abajo Lima from Cardiff University

Team 7

Matthew Tucker - Villanova University, USA
Fatumina Lopez- UCL, UK
Neyha Jaykar - Technical University Dortmund, Germany

Team 8

Chad Greco, University of Delaware (UD), USA
Fabian Feidl, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Ricardo Suarez-Heredia, UCL, United Kingdom

Team 10

Mengyuan Zheng, Tulane University, USA
Zhao Li, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Anshul Sharma, Univeristy College London, UK

Would you like to find out the final outcome? Then please join us in Barcelona for the awards presentations.

Press release: ACS - BIOT collaboration (April 2014)

After several years of fruitful collaboration, ESBES and ACS BIOT mutual collaboration status has been confirmed officially by both organizations. BIOT and ESBES align well in their focus in bringing biochemical expert from both academia and industry together to discuss highest level research, development and innovation. The agreement between BIOT and ESBES allows for each organization to have “affiliate” status with the other (host) organization. This affiliate status is established to increase the degree of collaboration between the two organizations who share common interests with respect to biotechnology and biochemical engineering at both sides of the Atlantic (US & Europe).

The affiliate organizations have representatives to serve on the organizing committee for the annual technical conference of the host organization (BIOT symposium at the ACS Annual Meetings and the alternating bi-annual ESBES and ECAB conferences, contributing to technical programming of the mutual conferences. This official collaboration additionally allows affiliate organizations to have a cross-promotional partnership to advertise their upcoming annual technical meetings on the host website as well as at the host’s annual technical conference.