This joint event organised by both the Biochemical Engineering Special Interest Group (BESIG) within the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) and the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre’s (IBioIC) Scottish Fermentation network (SFN), is being hosted at The University of Strathclyde’s Technology Innovation Centre (TIC) in Glasgow.

The majority of organic chemicals, nutraceuticals, fuels and polymers are still derived from fossil-based feedstocks, predominantly oil and gas. Advances in molecular biology techniques and an increased awareness and understanding of many emerging microorganisms, engineering biology methods and bio-based feedstocks, are now allowing scientists and engineers to rethink how the chemicals of the future are produced.

This one-day conference will look to bring together those with an interest in chemistry, biology, engineering and entrepreneurship, which are all the skills that will be needed to transition chemical production to bio-based methods using bio-based feedstocks. Talks will feature a range of speakers from universities and industry, covering a range of sectors looking to address this conversion. Featuring not just how they are addressing technical challenges, but also how to scale these to production, supported by several organisations that can help support with their services from cell identification to engineering and de-risking scale-up.