Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Session 1413

Biotechnology and Bioprocessing Laboratory for Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering Susan Sharfstein, Patricia Relue University of Toledo

Introduction With the revolutions in cell and molecular biology of the last three decades and the impending transformations that genomics and proteomics will bring, there has been increasing interest in incorporating biology and particularly biotechnology into the engineering curriculum. Bioengineering has often been considered only biomedical engineering; however, as described by Beth Panitz in ASEE Prism 1, it can include a variety of disciplines including biotechnology and bioprocessing, agricultural engineering, and food engineering.

This paper describes a biotechnology and bioprocessing course that was developed as a required senior laboratory for bioengineering students at the University of Toledo. The course is structured as an integrated series of laboratory experiments that follow a “biotechnology product” from conception to completion. The students guide their “product” through the research and development phases, into production and purification, and finally into analysis and “packaging” of the final product. This course differs from many traditional biochemical engineering laboratory courses 2-5 in that it incorporates a broad range of topics from an industrial processing perspective. The incorporation of techniques of modern molecular biology is also unique. While this course was designed in the context of a bioengineering curriculum, it could also be incorporated as a senior elective in a chemical engineering curriculum. It was expected that the students taking this course have had basic courses in the life sciences including laboratories. In addition, most of the engineering coursework in the bioengineering curriculum has a biological orientation. If it is taught to students without any prior courses in the life sciences, additional material should be provided in the lecture component.

This course has several educational objectives. First, the students gain an overview of the biotechnology industry and learn to appreciate the integration of the processes used in the industry. Second, the students would learn basic microbiology, molecular biology, and biochemistry laboratory techniques within the context of the use of these techniques in industrial and laboratory settings. Finally, the students see the application of these processes from reaction to separation and purification. In addition to these specific objectives, there are several other goals of this course in the context of the ABET 2000 criteria 6.

Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2001, American Society for Engineering Education

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Sharfstein, S., & Relue, P. (2001, June), Biotechnology And Bioprocessing Laboratory For Chemical Engineering And Bioengineering Paper presented at 2001 Annual Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 10.18260/1-2--8959