BioMADE Awarded $510,000 National Science Foundation Grant to Accelerate Bioindustrial Manufacturing Workforce Readiness

BioMADE, in partnership with member Delgado Community College, received a National Science Foundation grant to develop pioneering new industry-driven curricula for bioindustrial manufacturing that will build the technical workforce needed to support this growing sector.  

The goals of this project are to:  

• Develop, test, and finalize key bioprocessing concept education modules that meet performance benchmarks for bioindustrial manufacturing  

• Increase capacity of a diverse and inclusive workforce ecosystem and career entry through deployment and dissemination of curricula materials  

• Formalize the Community of Practice (CoP) for workforce agencies, academic institutions, and industry/commercial entities to inform local, regional, and national workforce efforts in bioindustrial manufacturing 

Through this project, industry subject matter experts will develop eight plug-and-play modules that are designed to be dropped into pre-existing courses, easing the burden on faculty. Each module will be 6-12 hours long and will include presentations, learning assessments, and lab exercises as relevant. Delgado Community College will serve as a testbed for the new modular curricula before subsequent dissemination and deployment of products to the wider community college ecosystem. Once evaluated and refined, the modules will be distributed to educators and workforce professionals nationwide. Modules will include: 

• Upstream processing 

• Downstream processing 

• Quality by design 

• Design of experiment  

• Good manufacturing process 

• Life cycle analysis  

• Quality systems  

• Techno-economic analysis  

All of these modules will ensure that students enter the bioindustrial manufacturing workforce highly skilled and capable of securing good-paying jobs in a variety of roles. With the global bioeconomy projected to reach $30 trillion within the next two decades, over 1.1 million new jobs will be needed. This work will give faculty the tools they need to easily incorporate biomanufacturing into their curricula and increase the number of students prepared to enter the biomanufacturing workforce.  

Get Involved!  

An Industry Advisory Council will play a key role in guiding the development of the modules and contributing to the key concepts that students should know to be successful in this field. If you’d like to participate in the Council, please contact Louise Petruzzella at lpetruzzella@biomade.org. Stay tuned for a webinar this fall to learn more about the module development and how you can get involved!