Biotechnology Process Engineering Center

Strategic Plan in Education

The objectives of this plan are to affect the education of undergraduates, graduates and industrial personnel. At the undergraduate level, our goal is to ensure the students are integrated into our research thrusts for both MIT (UROP) students and students from other institutions (REU and high schools). To expose the students to cross-disciplinary activities and teamwork, the projects are selected carefully and critically. The BPEC provides initial experiences to undergraduates and encourages students to work in industry as internees. Our industrial and education coordinators contacted companies associated with BPEC for summer undergraduate internships and the replies are then matched with BPEC’s undergraduates for summer employment.

We have also initiated a BS thesis research in the Center; note that a BS thesis is not required at MIT. This provides further experiences for our undergraduates, preparing them for either industrial positions or further postgraduate studies. Within the undergraduate educational plan, the BPEC has modified existing courses to incorporate biotechnology concepts into the curriculum. New courses, especially related to the Center's research thrusts, are also in our overall plan. The goals of our undergraduate program are to provide to industry well-trained students at an annual rate of 30 students per year for industry, with 25 students per year entering graduate studies.

At the graduate level, one of the goals of the BPEC is to provide research experience related to the Center's thrusts. We ensure that the research is conducted with a spirit of teamwork and cross-disciplinary input. This is achieved by joint faculty advisors on the doctoral thesis and/or thesis committee members from different departments and disciplines. To provide industrial perspectives on the students' training program, industrial personnel are often members of doctoral thesis committees. In addition, our industrial collaborators have also participated in course lectures, both for undergraduates and graduates.

To further integrate our graduate students into the industrial environment, our students are part of our technology transfer activities to industry. In this capacity, the students obtain valuable perspectives on industrial research and development and, at the same time, act as the conduit to testbeds at industrial sites. Our graduate students also actively participate as teaching assistants (TAs) in the courses which are related to the Center's research thrusts. This training provides experience in teaching in case the students are planning careers in academia.

Also at the graduate level, modified and new courses related to the Center's activities have been planned and are being implemented. As an example of a recent 12^th-year initiative, a new course entitled "Metabolic Engineering" was jointly offered by the Departments of Biology and Chemical Engineering. The completion of these tasks will represent the Center's contribution in new course materials for other academic institutions. It is our goal in the graduate educational plan to train this new breed of professionals for industry, university, and government. Our target has been the training of 25 PhDs per year through the BPEC's activities.

The last objective in our education plan is in industrial education. We have routinely provided continual education courses during the summer for industrial personnel. Our plans have been to update the industrial attendees with the most recent developments in biotechnology. In addition, we have developed new courses which were directly related to the BPEC research thrusts; for example, in August 1997, a new industrial course entitled "Methods, Logic and Opportunities in Metabolic Engineering" was offered. These continuing educational activities have trained over 250 industrial personnel per year.

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