Event

The Department of Bioengineering, Faculty of Engineering, Integral University organised a One day Workshop on “Bioreactor and its Scale up Strategies” through Google Meet on 26th July 2021 under the ‘Skill Development’ mandate of its Quality Assurance cell, BIQAC to impart and upgrade skills of the young researchers and students in Bioprocess Engg & Fermentation Technology provide insight to, all budding entrepreneurs, and knowledge about employability in the bioprocess industry.

Bioreactors are unique and indispensable to biotechnological industries. The applications of bioreactors are wide, from academic to commercial-scale laboratories, in drug discovery, pharmaceutical, environmental and life science for the development of vaccines, antibodies, cell culture, biofuel manufacturing and more. The essence of scale‐up of a fermentation process is to demonstrate fermentation production at large scale resulting in the same productivity and quality as that developed at small scale.

The workshop was conducted in two sessions. The event was hosted by Dr. Alvina Farooqui, Associate Professor, Department of Bioengineering, Integral University. The Inaugural session started at 10:30 am with a welcome address by Prof. (Dr.) Mohammed Haris Siddiqui, Head, Department of Bioengineering, Integral University. The speaker for the first session was Dr. B. Mazumdar, Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, NIT Raipur. He discussed about the bioreactor, its type, specifications, modelling, and process variable consideration for Bioprocess optimization. He also discussed about the various applications of bioreactor specifically in the field of tissue engineering, animal cell culture, food and beverage production, hydrogen production, and waste water treatment. He also gave valuable insights about the entrepreneurship and employability in the Bioprocess industry.

The second session was addressed by Dr. Jitendra Singh Verma, Scientist, Chemical Engineering Group, CSIR-NEIST, Jorhat, Assam. He focussed on the Scale up Strategies of Bioreactors. He discussed how Bench top model can be taken upto industrial scale. He also discussed the basic terminologies, thumb rules and key parameters taken into account to take fermentation products to commercial level. He mentioned about the differences between the optimization and scale up of bioprocess. The session was quite beneficial for the skill development of the participants. The session was followed by the Vote of Thanks delivered by Dr. Iffat Zareen Ahmad, Professor, Department of Bioengineering.

The workshop was coordinated by Dr. Ashish, Dr. Archana Vimal, Dr. Reena Vishvakarma, and supported by Er. Suhail Ahmad, Er. Gyanendra Tripathi, Er. Umar Azeem, and Ms. Priyanka Dubey, who ensured the smooth conduction of the event. The event was attended by more than 100 participants including UG and PG students, research scholars and faculty members. The overall feedback from the participants was quite overwhelming. We look forward to organise more such events in future. Attached here are some photographs of the Online Workshop.