IMTECH organizes national workshop on fundamentals of fermentation process development

Chandigarh: CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH) is hosting a national workshop on Fundamentals of Fermentation Process Development from 13th to 17th January 2020 being organized by Biochemical Engineering Research and Process Development Centre (BERPDC). The workshop is under the aegis of Government of India’s Skill Development mandate to impart and upgrade skills of the young researchers and students in the area of Fermentation Technology.

This workshop shall help the participants to acquire fundamental understanding of the relationship between process design and product quality in fermentation. This workshop also enables to increase employability and entrepreneurial potential of the participants in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Twenty one participants from different academic & research institutes of the country as well as from industry will be part of this five day workshop who will be mentored by the experts in the area of biochemical engineering.

Dr Sanjay Kumar, Director, CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (IHBT), Palampur who was also the Chief Guest for the occasion, inaugurated the workshop and Prof U. C. Banerjee, Head, Pharmaceutical Technology, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Mohali gave the inaugural lecture on “Mass transfer in bioreactors”.

Dr Manoj Raje, Acting Director, CSIR-IMTECH while welcoming the participants gave a brief background of CSIR-IMTECH & BERPDC and said, “The major objective of the workshop will be to impart training on fermentation principles and engineering fundamentals of growing microorganisms in a bioreactor to express industrially important biomolecules.”

Dr Anirban Roy Choudhury, the co-ordinator of the workshop, informed that the participants of the workshop shall be engaged in hands-on training in pilot-scale fermenters. This will help the participants to understand the critical process parameters required to achieve a robust fermentation process. The major topics that have been panned out during the five day workshop will be around microbial cell growth and product formation kinetics, the critical components of an industrial bioreactor and scale-up and downstream processing of fermentation processes.

CSIR-IMTECH is a national centre for excellence in microbial sciences and was established in 1984. IMTECH’s vision is to discover and develop translational products and new drugs to address key unmet medical needs.