The IBioIC Skills programme has the wind in its sails
It has been a whirlwind of activity for the IBioIC MSc in Industrial Biotechnology this semester so far. The MSc is run in conjunction with Strathclyde University and provides our students with extensive training via core and elective modules which are delivered at our collaborative HEIs throughout Scotland.
Training
This semester the students’ core modules have included Bioprocessing, Downstream Processing, and Synthetic Biology alongside electives such as ‘Blue Biotechnology’ at Scottish Association for Marine Science and the ‘Circular Economy and Transformations Towards Sustainability’ at Strathclyde.
Students attended IBioIC’s Bioprocessing Scale Up facility FlexBio at Heriot Watt University at the end of February as part of their Downstream Processing module, where they Isolated foaming proteins from beer (pretending they’re therapeutics!) using disc stack centrifugation, hollow fibre, TFF and chromatography.
The Bioprocessing module included a field trip to GSK in Irvine, where students had a very informative talk on the work at GSK and a tour round the facility.
Students are rounding off the year with ten week placements at a number of host companies. We’re delighted that so many members of our industrial network engage with this valuable programme and although it’s a huge amount of work for the Skills team, it’s fantastic to report the placements that have now been arranged and will be starting in May.
Kashel Mayne, Media Optimisation using shakeflask and 5L fermentation vessels.
Garry Paterson, Enzymatic purification of ucoidan.
Phycofoods Limited
Nicola Voiculescu, Exploring the potential of microalgae as biological life support system for prolongated underwater exploration.
Charlotte Tembo, Bacteriophage production using fermentation and downstream processing.
Paolo Savoca, Bioinformatics support and AI study for PhageTherapy.
Rishivanth Sridharan, Advancing Clean-in-Place Methodologies within an Industrial Scale Bioreactor System.
Amber Minhas, Assessing bacterial motility using the new Dynescan.
Rachel McGhee, Understanding the time-dependency of spermatozoa motility in various environments.
Cecilia McCann, Understanding the effect of freeze/thaw on the robustness of semen quality.
Sana Shaikh, (BVDV) Development of an isothermal amplification-based diagnostic product for veterinary applications.
Anjitha Mangalanandan, Optimisation of Spirulina growth utilising recycled culture media.
Christopher McAdam, Blue pigment accumulation in cyanobacterium Spirulina.
Madeline MarieDysart, Bio-based Coatings.
Matthew McBride, Product Development.
Uswah Hasanah Hafizal, Upstream development and optimisation of an industrial bioprocess..
IBioIC PhD Student Symposium – ‘IB in a changing world.’
The PhD Symposium is a flagship event in the PhD programme calendar, and this year 77 of our PhD students took part in a day of talks, networking and showcasing their project work to date. As an ajunct of the IBioIC Annual Conference, this is also a valuable opportunity for our PhDs to share their work with a wider audience.
Amongst that audience is our MSc cohort, who are invited to take part in vertical networking and get a feel for life as a PhD, to ask questions and hear what fields our PhDs are working on and gain a deeper understanding of the relationships between academia and industry.
The most successful of our Prosperity Partnerships to date is with Fujifilm. Their cohort of students are invited to our CPD training events within their 4-year projects, and this allowed our MScs to talk to the Fujifilm students during the symposium and find out more about what it is like to be part of such a global organisation.
IBioIC’s 9th annual conference provided this year’s cohort with a chance to meet and network with a wide range of industry partners. They had the opportunity to discuss projects with their potential placement supervisors for their 10 week project placements.
Catherine Baker Memorial Prize Winners, 2023
Three of last year’s 2021/22 cohort attended the conference and the conference dinner as ‘Catherine Baker Memorial Prize Winners’. This prize showcases the achievements of the students from their studies.
This year’s winners were Jacob Wiseman – MiAlgae (2 awards), Ryan Treadwell – Roslin CT, (1 award) and Eve Hamilton – Celtic Renewables - (1 award). All three have continued their journey within IB since graduation.