Research Areas at the Institute of Technical Chemistry

Our research projects are in the field of industrial biotechnology, with a focus on biocatalysis, bioprocess technology, bioanalytics, cell culture technology, bioreactor development, and respective computational applications. While a wide variety of our projects are purely fundamental research, the TCI regularly also has application-oriented collaborations with industrial partners reaching from start-ups to large enterprises.

In the field of industrial biotechnology, different aspects of bioprocess development, especially for the pharmaceutical or food industry, are dealt with. In addition to the control, regulation, and optimization of cultivation processes with bacteria, fungi or mammalian cells, also purely enzymatic processes are investigated at TCI. Herein, we research the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), flavors, fragrances, and biopolymers. Since the isolation of products with high purity and high yields can be challenging in biotechnological processes, a wide variety of innovative processing techniques are being evaluated as well to overcome classical limitations such as lack of high-throughput, lack of continuous process monitoring & control, or significant product loss.

The Institute of Technical Chemistry has two main research areas: Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering.

The research area Bioengineering includes the working groups for biocatalytic synthesis, reaction engineering, animal and human cell cultivation, upstream and downstream processing to sensor development, chip technology and biotesting. However, topics such as microalgae cultivation or material development for medical biotechnology are also dealt with. In the field of bioinformatics, aspects of data processing from statistical test planning as well as image and data analysis are covered. The specialized research groups in the Bioengineering area are as follows:

• Biocatalysis and bioprocessing | Prof. Dr. Selin Kara
• Bioprocess technology | apl. Prof. Sascha Beutel
• Bioprocess analytics | Dr. Dörte Solle
• Microarray technologies and biotesting | Dr. Frank Stahl
• Bioinformatics | Dr. Patrick Lindner

The research area Biomedical Engineering comprises various working groups and areas, which deal with implant research and development, biotesting of materials and substances for medical applications, cell cultivation for tissue engineering, in vitro 3D cell systems and design of biomaterials for biomedical technology. The research area Biomedical Engineering is divided into the following research groups:

• Biomedical engineering for diagnostic tests and tissue engineering | apl. Prof. Dr. Cornelia Blume
• Cell culture technology | PD Dr.  Antonia Lavrentieva
• Biomaterial design with biotechnology | Dr. Iliyana Pepelanova