University of Georgia students visit FlexBio
In July, 14 students attended FlexBio from the University of Georgia (UGA) as part of an Academic Programs International (API) study abroad programme, studying Biotechnology and Business. As part of a 3 week visit to Scotland, they attended a 3-day Bioprocessing training course at FlexBio, a bioprocessing scale-up facility hosted at Heriot-Watt university and run by IBioIC.
Activities included ‘Build-a-bioreactor’ including the assembly, disassembly and setup of 2 litre bioreactors, a ‘microbiology school’ featuring plating and cell counting techniques using yeast and cyanobacteria, a sterilisation-in-place (SIP) of a 30L stainless bioreactor and a ‘downstream processing masterclass’ extracting foaming proteins from beer. This was supported by daily lectures on scale-up, industry examples and good laboratory practices.
The inspiration behind the visit was thanks to Dr David Blum who formally ran a similar scale-up facility at UGA. He conceived the idea for the visit in 2019 but the Covid-19 pandemic meant it was not until 2023 that he was finally bring a dream to reality, much to the benefit of the students. Credit is due to him and faculty as the students had an impressive level of biotechnology knowledge and a clear passion and enthusiasm which meant the course was interactive, memorable and fun. Credit also to the expertise of the FlexBio team for planning and delivering such as innovative training programme.
In addition to the FlexBio visit, the students also made visits to The Edinburgh Genome Foundry, The International Centre of Brewing & Distilling (ICBD) at Heriot-Watt university and also IBioIC member Ogi Bio. The conception and combination of a summer cultural visit to see some of Scotland’s great sites, including Edinburgh and the Isle of Skye, as well as technical visits & training, supplemented by scheduled lectures in biotech and business, meant the 14 students had a summer to never forget. We look forward to hosting similar students on future trips.
If you’d like to get involved with hosting students to talk about your company or work as part of a similar cultural visit, then do get in touch with Madison Rolls who coordinates the visits for API experiences (madison.rolls@apiexperience.com).
