Biochemical Engineering Certificate Program

Program Overview

The Biochemical Engineering Certificate program provides a comprehensive understanding of biochemical engineering principles and applications. Students complete two required courses and two electives from a range of topics, including biomaterials, drug delivery, gene therapy, and protein engineering. The program prepares graduates for careers in the pharmaceutical and bioprocess industries, where they can design and operate bioreactors, develop new bioproducts, and ensure regulatory compliance.

Program Outline

Outline:

• The Biochemical Engineering Certificate consists of two required courses and two elective courses.
• Required Courses:
• CHE 8588: Biochemical Engineering I (Fall Semester)
• CHE 8589: Biochemical Engineering II (Spring Semester)
• Elective Courses:
• Students must select two electives from the following list:
• CHE 7587: Biopharm Facility Design
• CHE 8586: Biomaterials & Drug Delivery
• CHE 8591: Gene & Cell Therapy
• CHE 8592: Protein Engineering
• CHE 8663: Systems Biology
• CHM 7693: Core Biochemistry
• CHE 8564: Fluid Dynamics
• CHE 8563: Transport Phenomena
• CHE 7005: Global Pharmaceutical Business
• Course Descriptions:
• 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.
• 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.
• CHE 7587: Biopharm Facility Design - Design of facilities for the pharmaceutical and bioprocess industries.
Equipment selection, economics, team work, and presentations.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.