Teaching biotechnology for human health: from the bench to the market Erasmus Project

Project Title

Teaching biotechnology for human health: from the bench to the market

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

Health biotechnology has been a major industrial sector during the 21st century and a great employment opportunity for young graduates. However, related graduate programmes traditionally provide scientific knowledge and technical skills to be applied in research or professional laboratories, but are poorly oriented to serve as a bridge between Academia and Industry and to explore activities past the bench work, such as the management of biotechnology products. As a result, today biotech degrees are not widely accepted in the European business arena.The main goal of the Biotech-Ma project was therefore to contribute to improve these degrees and to provide graduate students with the proper resources to navigate with confidence through an increasingly complex business environment. To achieve this objective, the first step was to organise a group of European academic and industrial organisations, which would develop together a new Master programme in health biotechnology, implemented in close cooperation with industrial and other non-academic stakeholders. The Consortium included academic partners (the Universities of Bologna; Oviedo, Spain; Pau, France; Pécs, Hungary; Aberdeen, UK), one partner from the industrial world (Bioindustry Park Silvano Fumero) and one from the Italian National Research Council (ISTEC-CNR). The academic partners were selected due to their participation in previous European projects with similar objectives, such as the IP LLP Erasmus in 2012-13 and the Summer School “Innovation and Technology Management in Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology” in 2013-14. Cooperation and communication within the Consortium was facilitated by a well-established network created during these experiences and the existence of a double degree programme between Bologna and Oviedo. The current project represented the logical follow-up from the previous experiences, with one additional objective: to foster the relationship between the biotech academic world and the job market in the industrial and private sectors.
Indeed, to develop a new joint degree in line with the current market needs, the Consortium actively involved several European and international biotech companies through a specifically designed survey. The development of the ” Innovation and Business in Health Biotechnology (IBiHB)” master programme followed two steps: starting from an analysis of the existing biotech programmes at the partner universities, an initial draft curriculum was prepared; this was then compared with the results of the survey: keeping in consideration the suggestions received by the surveyed stakeholders, a final and complete version of the Master degree was developed to offer the best of both traditional university coursework and basic notions in areas such as management, marketing, intellectual property and ethics, which will favour work placement in the European and international industry. The validity of the survey results was assured by a significant preliminary work, coordinated by the non-academic partners, thanks to their industrial knowledge, and aimed at developing a proper questionnaire and at addressing it to the proper set of companies. The major complexity in the curriculum development came from harmonising the often quite different national and institutional regulations in place at the partner universities.
2 Summer Schools on biobusiness were organised during the project on one side to pilot test on the interaction between universities, students and companies, and on the other to test the combination of scientific and entrepreneurial teachings. Summer Schools have also been embedded in the new joint degree, to reinforce the network between industry and academia. A Cooperation Agreement and a Sustainability plan was developped for IBiHB. An intense management work was carried out during the project to ensure its smooth implementation; it included the organisation of several in presence and online meetings, dissemination activities to promote the project at local and international level, the evaluation of all these events.
The results of the project have the potential to be transferred and exploited in other EU and non-EU countries and disciplines. Indeed, they derive from an in-depth debate during project implementation, between international academic and industrial partners about Europe’s future in the global biotech sector and whether Europe is equipping itself with an efficient policy framework to encourage innovation and retain it. The new joint degree will provide a wide spectrum of career advice to the participating students, offering them multiple occasions to meet and interact with people from business organisations. Once the IBiHB has been launched in the partner universities, the impact will be assessed by measuring the satisfaction of the graduate students during the academic training and by analysing their employment situation after studies have been completed.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 257390 Eur

Project Coordinator

ALMA MATER STUDIORUM – UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA & Country: IT

Project Partners

• UNIVERSIDAD DE OVIEDO
• THE UNIVERSITY COURT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN
• PECSI TUDOMANYEGYETEM – UNIVERSITY OF PECS
• CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE
• BIOINDUSTRY PARK SILVANO FUMERO SPA
• UNIVERSITE DE PAU ET DES PAYS DE L’ADOUR