Program Overview

Introduction to the Centre for Molecular Biochemical Engineering

The Centre for Molecular Biochemical Engineering encompasses the fields of biotechnologies and biomanufacturing, biofuels, and environmental engineering, as well as the food industry. In addition to traditional chemical engineering approaches to manufacturing and processing in these fields, the centre focuses on molecular design and the understanding of fundamental physico-chemical, biochemical, and biophysical phenomena underlying associated technologies.

Key Areas of Focus

• Molecular biochemical engineering is a multidisciplinary field that gathers concepts and technologies in:
  • Materials science and chemistry, including the design of soft matter interfaces, macromolecular architectures, and harnessing of self-assembly
  • Chemical engineering, including nano/micro-fabrication, membrane technologies, sensing platforms, and catalysis
  • Biology, including stem cell biology, biotherapeutics design and production, and biomanufacturing

Societal Challenges Addressed

The field of molecular biochemical engineering directly addresses key societal challenges, including:

• Tackling infectious diseases and responding to pandemics through the development of biotherapeutics, biosensing/testing, and scale-up of biomanufacturing
• Improving healthy ageing in the population through the scale-up and parallelisation of stem cell manufacturing and biotherapeutics
• Achieving environmental targets to tackle global warming and plastics pollution through biofuels, degradable and biosourced plastics, sensing, biomass degradation, and reprocessing

Vision and Expertise

The vision is for molecular biochemical engineering to play an increasing role in the UK's response to key societal challenges such as global pandemics, healthy ageing, and the race against global warming. Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) has significant expertise and unique facilities in this field, particularly in molecular design.

Specific Areas of Research

• Atomistic model of responsive polymer brushes
• Bioactive emulsions
• Bioemulsions for stem cell manufacturing

News and Events

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• No upcoming events scheduled.