Inside IALR

Training the Workforce in Industrial Fermentation Processes

• Institute for Advanced Learning and Research

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Industrial fermentation—a core biotechnology process that harnesses living organisms—is a growing discipline used across multiple industries. In this episode of Inside IALR, we recap IALR’s first week-long fermentation workshop, offered in partnership with Virginia Tech and industry experts. Joining the conversation are Dr. Scott Lowman, Ph.D., Vice President of Applied Research at IALR; Biswarup Mukhopadhyay, Ph.D., Professor with Virginia Tech's Department of Biochemistry; and Justin Cesmat, Product Line Manager for Bioprocessing at Distek, Inc. They share insights on:

  • Fundamentals of fermentation and its real-world applications
  • Workshop structure, participants, and hands-on training
  • Interdisciplinary skills needed for success in fermentation
  • Importance of collaboration between academia and industry
  • Plans for expanding future fermentation training programs

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Caleb Ayers:

All right, so welcome to another episode of Inside IALR. Thanks for joining us. So we have a fun one today. Sometimes, you know, we're talking about internship programs, Sometimes we're talking about manufacturing processes and today, of all things, we're talking about fermentation. So we here at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research housed a one-week workshop this past week, January 13th through 17th, for basically training entry-level workers and even some college students on sort of the processes of fermentation. So I'm going to have we have four guests today, so it'll be a packed group. I'm going to have each of you guys introduce yourselves.

Biswarup Mukhopadhyay:

Yeah, my name is Vishwar Mukhopadhyay. I'm a professor of biochemistry at Virginia Tech, originally trained as a chemist and engineer. Biochemical engineer then became microbiologist and biochemist.

Scott Lowman:

And I'm Scott Lohman. I am vice president of research at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research and I'm happy to participate with this podcast.

Caleb Ayers:

And we realized today, the most frequent guest on this podcast we've had, so excellent.

Justin Cesmat:

And I'm Justin Sesmat. I'm the product line manager for our bioprocessing product line at Distek, so we produce a line of benchtop bioreactors and controllers which were used as the hands-on instrument for this training course, and my background is actually in biosystems engineering. I've done a lot of work with process scale-up and tech transfer around fermentation and cell culture process.

Caleb Ayers:

This is a question, open-ended question for all of you. We'll keep it short and sweet. What is fermentation, and kind of what industries is that commonly used in?

Biswarup Mukhopadhyay:

Fermentation came from anaerobic processes where some sort of a like it started with the alcoholic fermentation, where production of alcohol that's where the word came and those processes occur in the absence of oxygen Wine is another one, and talking about beer but then those occurred in large tanks or large systems and then people started producing product using microbes at large tanks, so similar to operationally like alcohol production, but in the presence of oxygen. But they continue to use the word fermentation and fermenter, although those are not occurring in the presence of oxygen, and that's caught on. So now everything about growing microbes at a larger scale we call fermentation and fermenter, but better word probably bioreactor, which is a more neutral term.

Caleb Ayers:

Okay, so anything with microbes you're saying, that sort of falls under the umbrella of fermentation? I know this was the first workshop we offered here. Tell us a little bit about kind of what the week was like. Well, first of all, I guess, who came to this workshop? What was kind of the target market for this?

Scott Lowman:

We're so thrilled to host the workshop here at the Institute and it's a great opportunity for us to bring together experts like Professor Mukagopathy from Virginia Tech, as well as industry like this tech, and to see their wonderful equipment. But, importantly, we also have students here from community college, from Virginia Tech, as well as industry participants, so people that are scaling up or building new facilities and they're interested in sending employees here to learn more about fermentation. So it's a week-long event, it's hands-on, it's taught by experts and, again, it's something that we're very proud to partner with Virginia Tech to put this on.

Caleb Ayers:

So what was this week like for the students that were here? I mean, walk me through. Was it a lot of classroom time, a lot of experimenting with different kinds of technology and hands-on? Was it some of all of the above? What was this week like?

Scott Lowman:

The week included both classroom and hands-on activities. They not only learned about the fundamentals and the principles of fermentation in the classroom, but they went and then put those principles to work on machines themselves and on various types of equipment to analyze the products coming from that fermentation.

Justin Cesmat:

And one thing for me from Distek that I really liked about this workshop is that we did get our hands dirty with working on the equipment. A lot of training courses really do focus a lot on theory and lecture, which is great. You do get a lot of foundational knowledge that way, but really solidifying it and running the systems with actual microbes really drives home those concepts that we learn in the lecture, and so having the ability to go back and forth between the two I think really sets these students up for understanding how the industry works, not only from a conceptual side, but when they run the small-scale bioreactors. Those will scale to large scale, which they'll see in industry as they get out into the workforce and with kind of what was going on this week specifically.

Caleb Ayers:

I heard I mean you were talking about a bioreactor. I wasn't here, I wasn't able to come see it that day. Talk to me about kind of what students were learning with these reactors, what they got to do with them.

Biswarup Mukhopadhyay:

Well, a student learned that a process originally will develop in a laboratory on a petri plate, on a small containers like flasks, and then how to take that to a size or a scale where you can produce for marketing it or selling. So when things go from the lab to the large scale, sometimes things don't work out. So how to make it work? The large scale sometimes things don't work out, so how to make it work? What are the precautions you could take at a smaller scale and how to scale that up? Other option is scale down. So envision the larger scale from the very beginning. Design your experiment at a smaller scale so that way that will be one day will be scaled up. So they learn that. And it's highly interdisciplinary. So talking about microbiology, chemical engineering, biochemistry, economics, all those combined, and here they learn how the process between the small scale and a reactor scale is different and in what way it is similar.

Caleb Ayers:

I think what you guys are both talking about is really cool, that the hands-on part of this workshop, that it's not just sitting in a class, it's very hands-on getting your hands dirty, as you said and also very multidisciplinary. I think that kind of wraps up a lot of what we try to do here at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research. We have a lot of different training programs, ranging from honestly elementary school even for STEM camps and things like that, but middle school all the way through adult learners, and the whole point is that it's a good mix of classroom but also you have to do it with your hands. You know. You're not just going to learn about it in the book, you have to do it and whether that's training people to work for Navy suppliers or in a middle school classroom teaching them about welding, or now in these workshops we're offering here, they have to get their hands dirty and I like to see that.

Caleb Ayers:

Talk to me about kind of the collaboration of that. Scott, I know we've had this idea for a while of being able to offer this. Talk to me about the collaboration and sort of how we brought this together to not just include us but to include Virginia Tech to include Distek, and I know there were other companies involved as well. So kind of talk about how this all came together.

Scott Lowman:

So Dr Mukagopathy and I have been talking for a number of years now about not only the hands-on training, but the opportunity that we have here at the Institute to partner with Virginia Tech to offer a different type of training, something that's not only geared towards undergraduate and grad students, but something that could include companies and community college students or people wishing to change careers. We believe that the fermentation industry is growing in Virginia. All data indicate that the governor has just invested $90 million at three centers across the state to increase the amount of discovery that can lead to fermentation. But we know that there are not a lot of support services for those companies on the job training side or on the scale-up side. So we think there's an opportunity to be both, and the Institute's a great place to do it because we're flexible, we have wonderful facilities and classrooms and labs right next to each other.

Caleb Ayers:

And for you guys at Distek. I mean, how did you get involved in this? And sort of what's the why would you want to be involved in something like this?

Justin Cesmat:

Yes.

Justin Cesmat:

So Distek, really as far as our instrumentation goes, one thing that we really do emphasize is ease of use, offering a system that can be a very good training platform for new scientists that are getting into large-scale bioprocessing, bioreactors, that sort of thing.

Justin Cesmat:

So whenever we have the opportunity to support these types of training centers, we jump on them because it really does. It's a gap that I notice a lot when we're going to different customer sites and evaluations and universities where many of the researchers are very much focused on the science and they don't know how to take that science from a concept or from a petri dish, as Biswarp was saying, and taking that to a bioreactor, and so these types of courses really are going to help those scientists learn how to do that work and ultimately be more successful with their process, scale up and actually taking their projects to industry. So, as far as DISTEC goes, that's one thing that we really pride ourselves on, and we have many different controllers at teaching institutions throughout the US. So this IALR support is right in our wheelhouse and we love to help these types of programs.

Caleb Ayers:

Yeah, no, absolutely, and I know we go the opposite way. Where we were, I mean, technically a part of the Commonwealth of Virginia, but work very well. We're bridging that gap between public and private sector and bringing all those, whether it be a company like Distek or Virginia Tech, and bringing those things together. I think that's Scott can talk about that all day how that's sort of what we do is bring academia and industry together, and I think this is a great reflection of that. So what's kind of the? You know we had our first one-week workshop. Is this something that's going to continue or are we going to try to keep offering this or scaling this up or what's kind of the next steps?

Scott Lowman:

I think we definitely want to continue this and expand. We'll get together in the next couple weeks and sort of you know recap what we did and see areas we can improve, but the important thing is we've done it. Once We've got our feet wet, we know what to expect now and the participation has been great with the folks attending. So I myself personally'm super happy with how everything turned out and it's something that part of our mission as economic development and being a regional catalyst for regional transformation is also to support industry in the region and beyond, and this really meets that workforce component of industry support.

Caleb Ayers:

That's all the questions that I have. We'll keep it short and sweet. Is there anything else that you guys would want to add, or anything else you think it's important that people know?

Biswarup Mukhopadhyay:

I could comment that this is a collaboration and so we are very careful building the first one. So we reached out to folks we knew and folks we did not know, to folks we knew and folks we did not know. The focus has been that not only they are great as a technology, scientist, equipment, but do they have the temperament for the teaching, teaching this kind of thing to sometime uninitiated. Our goal ultimately to reach a population from high school, community college, college and PhD. So this kind of program should be broad enough that everybody will get skilled at a particular level that is needed for industry. We need everybody. So I think we have met that goal, or we are very happy about that. We feel that we gathered a team who is able to train at that particular range of folks.

Caleb Ayers:

All right, Well, yeah again, thank you all for being here. I think this is cool just to see the collaboration as you all were talking about. So thanks for joining us today.