Learning, Designing, Competing: The Biotech Delft Downstream Processing Experience

Learning, Designing, Competing: The Biotech Delft Downstream Processing Experience

“Nice to hear contrasting opinion between industry and academia”

From 30 June – 4 July 2025 the Advanced Course on Downstream Processing was organized by BioTech Delft (Yvonne van Gameren, Jenifer Baptiste) in the Applied Sciences building of the TU Delft.

This course is designed to equip participants with the essential tools to quantitatively and systematically design an integrated downstream process. Established in 1989, it has a long-standing tradition of excellence in bioprocess education. The course is led by renowned experts in the field: Prof. Luuk van der Wielen (TU Delft) and Prof. Marcel Ottens (TU Delft).

An international group of experts (Manuel van Leusden, Raquel Aires Barros, Reinoud Noordman, Jurgen Hubbuch, Alexander Hanke, Danielle Horneman, Rob Geertman, Bas Kokke, Beckley Nfor, Maarten Pennings and Matthias Wiendahl) from both industry and academia gave lectures to assure an optimal balance of practical knowledge and theoretical insight, which subsequently was trained by exercises, into the quantitative engineering aspects of bioseparations.

“It was very interesting expanding beyond the equations and models”

As part of the course, participants had the opportunity to compete for the Best Design Award 2025. The challenge involved working in teams of two to tackle a case study focused on designing a downstream process. Throughout the week, teams developed their designs, and the team with the most outstanding design was awarded the prize.

This case study was made possible through the invaluable support of PhD candidates from the Bioprocess Engineering group of the Department of Biotechnology: Ben Tumulero, Ivo Tjalma, Mariana Carvalho.

We are proud to announce the winners of this year’s award: Stephan Pilz, Process Development Engineer at Wacker Chemie and Marit Brugmans, EngD at TU Delft.

“I really like how the structured the case study was organized”

The 27 participants in the course are from all over the world and work in industry or at a university.