The BBTC has been established to be a world class centre which will provide higher level knowledge transfer for both the existing biopharmaceutical industry and potential inward investors.

Newcastle University has a strong reputation for industrially facing bioprocessing research and innovation and will address skills shortages in the biopharmaceutical industry sector. The BBTC provides the opportunity for academics and industrialists to work together in developing practical skills in bioprocessing and the extraction of information from data to improve bioprocessing.

Working as a broker between the University and industry, the centre’s industrial liaison director understands industry needs and provides an awareness of what is possible in terms of knowledge transfer. The Director will establish industrial projects for the EngD course and ensure long term industrial need is considered in academic research.

If your organisation would like to explore areas of mutual interest please contact Dr Gavin Clark the Industrial Liaison director on +44 191 222 5332 or email ild@nclbiosystems.net

Profile

An industrial microbiologist by training, Gavin's early career in R&D at Glaxo and SmithKline Beecham is complemented by 14 years experience in the commercialisation of academic research outputs obtained in the UK and in New Zealand.

Gavin was Director of Commercialisation at Massey University, NZ, and more recently co-founder and first MD of Polybatics group companies (Holdings/Trading), a NZ spinout commercialising a microbial bio-nanotechnology platform.

Gavin returned to the UK in 2007 and worked for the Biosciences KTN and served as a member of the government-sponsored Innovation & Growth Team for Industrial Biotechnology. He joined the BBTC in January 2010.

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Through support from the regional development agency, One NorthEast, the Centre Industrial Liaison Director is tasked with growing the linkages between the academic base and industrial community to ensure the long term strength and capability of the technology base. To achieve these objectives the primary roles of the Director are to:

Identify quick wins

This involves recognising industrial challenges where quick win solutions will potentially deliver rapid pay-back; building the team, identifying funding opportunities and leading the academic / industrial team to obtain any necessary financial support required for the achievement of a solution.

Facilitate the solution of collaborative research problems

Identify projects where a matched industrial need and academic capability to deliver exists and lead the establishment of the research project team that have the necessary skills-base to potentially deliver the solution. In addition, the Director communicates the long-term industrial research challenges of the biopharmaceutical industry to the academic community to direct research goals towards industrial needs.

Identify, coordinate and deliver knowledge transfer and training

The Director leads the establishment of continuing professional development and training activities that deliver specific requirements for local industry. Looking to the future, they also identify medium term training needs of local industry and develop activities that satisfy these through building the academic delivery team and identifying and exploiting funding opportunities.

In these activities a close working relationship with the Centre for Process Innovation and the Centre of Excellence in Life Sciences has been established to build complementary activities that maximise the benefits and cost effectiveness of training and research provision to industry and the region.