Eurizon.eu

Organization: 3BIO - BioSystems, BioModelling & BioProcesses

Location: Brussels, Belgium

Field: Control engineering

Requirements:

The candidate should hold a PhD in Bioengineering Sciences or equivalent and have proven a strong expertise in mathematical modeling and in bioreactor process development, monitoring and control. The candidate should have a high motivation to pursue a challenging and autonomous research.

Abstract:

The job lies in the framework of monitoring and control of bioreactors in the biopharmaceutical industry. The first objective is to develop a systematic methodology for the determination of chemically defined culture medium using fed-batch strategies, with a view to process optimization in terms of productivity, costs reduction and reproducibility. The second one is to develop a model based multivariable controller allowing the online separate feeds with selected subparts of the culture medium (the “cocktails”).

Description:

This research lies within the field of biopharmaceutical process development for recombinant proteins production in bioreactor, based on a bacterial dynamical model and multivariable closed loop control. In the industrial context, these types of processes undergo increasing severe constraints, in terms of productivity, costs reduction and process reproducibility that guarantee the product quality. The technological inputs that allow to face the above mentioned constraints are at the scale of the process, from its early development (R&D, scaling up) to its establishment in a production schema (monitoring, automatic control).

The two main objectives during this two-year project are

1) the development of a systematic methodology for the determination of chemically defined culture medium using fed-batch strategies. This latter will lead to optimal culture conditions in terms of productivity, reproducibility, etc. The novelty of this methodology will consist to split the medium input in a few subparts (main carbon, and nitrogen sources, etc.) which could be used as individual feeds (i.e. the “cocktails”) during the culture.

2) the development and validation of a multivariable controller allowing the online separate feeds with the different cocktails, in order to optimize the bioprocess. The optimization strategy and the tuning of the closed loop controller will be based on the identification of dynamical mathematical models.

Deadline: 31-03-2011

Contacts:

Link: http://babylone.ulb.ac.be

Email: philippe.bogaerts@ulb.ac.be

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