Program Overview

Biochemical Engineering Certificate Program

The Biochemical Engineering Certificate program is designed for working professionals seeking to gain experience, develop skills, and increase their knowledge in a specific area. The program consists of four or five courses, which can also be applied toward a degree in the related field if accepted into the master's program.

Program Overview

The certificate program introduces the fundamentals of Biochemical Engineering and topics supporting the Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical industries. Students can earn the Biochemical Engineering Certificate, which is a concentration of courses that can be applied toward a Master's in Chemical Engineering with a concentration in Biochemical Engineering.

Required Courses

• CHE 8588 - Biochemical Engineering I: Basics of biochemistry, microbiology, cell biology, and molecular biology, as applied to bioproduct formation; enzyme kinetics, immobilized enzymes, diffusion limitations, immobilized enzyme reactors; cell growth kinetics, batch and continuous fermentor operation, bioreactor operation; sterilization, oxygen transfer, and scaleup. (3 credit hours)
• CHE 8589 - Biochemical Engineering II: Fedbatch, continuous, immobilized-cell, and other advanced bioreactors; bioreactor monitoring and control; design and operation of downstream processes, including cell disruption, filtration, extraction, chromatography; facility design; validation and regulatory issues. (3 credit hours)

Elective Courses

Two electives are to be selected from the following list of courses, subject to the approval of the Chemical Engineering Department:

• CHE 7587 - Biopharm Facility Design: Design of facilities for the pharmaceutical and bioprocess industries. Equipment selection, economics, teamwork, and presentations. (3 credit hours)
• CHE 8586 - Biomaterials & Drug Delivery: Materials for use in medicine and in/on the body, material bulk and surface properties, biological responses to materials, applications, manufacturing processes, cost, sterilization, packaging, and regulatory issues. Drug delivery mechanisms, issues, and modeling. (3 credit hours)
• CHE 8591 - Gene & Cell Therapy: An introduction to molecular genetics, genomic editing techniques, and a survey of recent successful gene and cell therapies in the clinic. (3 credit hours)
• CHE 8592 - Protein Engineering: Advanced concepts of protein structure, stability, and activity applied to the modification and improvement of proteins and enzymes; along with computer simulations of protein structure and activity. (3 credit hours)
• CHE 8663 - Systems Biology: MATLAB-based modeling and analysis approaches for drug target identification: introduction to systems biology, biological reaction networks, model construction and parameter estimation, sensitivity analysis, metabolic modeling, pathway network analysis, pharmacokinetic modeling, biological data analysis, and systems biology approaches for personalized medicine. (3 credit hours)
  • Plus, any second elective course in the list of electives above or:
    • CHM 7693 - Core Biochemistry: Protein structure; protein function and structure-function relationships in proteins; regulatory mechanisms in proteins, including ligand effectors, covalent modification, and proteolysis; structural and functional genomics and proteomics. (3 credit hours)
    • CHE 8564 - Fluid Dynamics: Theory and applications of fluid dynamics: continuity equation, equation of motion, ideal fluid flow, laminar viscous flow, boundary layer flow, turbulent flow. (3 credit hours)
    • CHE 8563 - Transport Phenomena: Unified study of momentum, heat, and mass transport with emphasis on theory and applications of fluid dynamics and mass transfer. Underlying physical laws, mathematical representation of transport laws, transport analogies. (3 credit hours)
    • CHE 7005 - Global Pharmaceutical Business: Covers new technologies that drive new bioproducts and bioprocesses in the pharmaceutical industry. Includes regulatory harmonization, global access to medicines, elements of global supply chain management, and risk-based quality and marketing approaches that differ across products and countries. (3 credit hours)