Biotech coordinator: Consider long-term perspective and dynamics

By expanding the training and further education of skilled workers as well as certain research and building infrastructure, the state coordinator for biotechnology, Eckhard Thines, will further advance Rhineland-Palatinate as a location for the industry. For example, start-ups need smaller production facilities in order to save costs in the early stages of development. Money can also be saved with the targeted use of artificial intelligence, he told the German Press Agency in Mainz. In order to have enough skilled workers, even more development opportunities must be offered, especially for young people.

Production capacity for biotechnology is currently largely located in large companies, Thines stressed. “They are certified, these are processes that are expensive and highly economized.” It is difficult for start-ups to get into them or they cannot afford it. This is where a facility specifically designed for pilot projects on a manageable scale could help. There is talk of setting up something like this with coupled artificial intelligence (AI). AI could help to keep the number of experiments and thus the costs within limits.

With regard to such a pilot plant, Thines said: “Something like this is not cheap, but there is a huge need for it.” He also sees a demand from industry, which also needs research capacity away from the large production plants. “I am firmly convinced that we can get partners from industry to set something like this up,” said Thines, who holds a professorship for biotechnology at the Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU) in Mainz. It is conceivable that this could be set up in a kind of public-private partnership, or even a public-private collaboration.

When it comes to skilled workers, he currently sees the bottleneck in laboratory technicians, technical assistants and IT staff. “But we also need people for health economics, we need people for patent law and IP law. These are things that must be addressed in training.” At his Institute for Microbiology and Biotechnology at JGU, five technical assistants will be retiring in the next five years. “That makes me break out in a sweat; the market for technical assistants is empty,” said Thines.

In order to secure new talent, young people need to be offered prospects. “Ultimately, I don’t think it’s because we’re not getting enough people.” It depends on whether we can give young people attractive prospects.” We need academic training, certificate programs, and even distance learning master’s programs. “These are the offers we want to develop.”

Internationally oriented courses taught in English are important. In 2012, there were 31 Erasmus contracts in the biology department at the University of Mainz and only two students from abroad. “This is not because Mainz is such an unattractive city, on the contrary.” It is because we simply did not have any English-language courses.”

A lot has happened since then, Thines emphasised. “When we re-accredit biology today, we are actually only accrediting courses that are taught in English. With the exception of teacher training courses.” More intensive work must also be done in schools, emphasised the state coordinator. “We need to go to schools, we need to be more present in STEM classes with biotechnology.”

“We have to position ourselves in such a way that we can meet the needs of the market in terms of training and research,” added Thines. There has been a lot of talk recently about BASF, for example, shutting down plants at its headquarters in Ludwigshafen. At the same time, however, the company is building up biotechnology and fermentation technology. “This is a dynamic change.” It had to be responded to. Fermentation technology involves the use of microorganisms to produce a wide variety of products.

For the further development of the Rhineland-Palatinate biotechnology location, many adjustments have to be made in parallel. “You have to keep a long-term perspective in mind, even though technological development may be so fast that it will be overtaken by this long-term perspective before you reach your goal,” said Thines. That doesn’t make it easy. “But my goodness, if it were easy, anyone could do it.”