BTEC will train thousands
to aid state’s industry

Gov. Mike Easley told a crowd of about 125 people gathered on Centennial Campus for the Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center (BTEC) groundbreaking Thursday, June 2, that “BTEC is something that when I bring it up in the presence of CEOs…you can read their body language. They understand that we get it.”

Courtesy of O’Brien/Atkins Associates

An artist’s rendering of the Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center, which will be built on Centennial Campus.

UNC President Molly Broad called it “a red-letter day…a day we can celebrate what we can do when higher education, government leaders, industry, not-for-profit organizations, The NC Biotech Center and others work for a common cause.”

Easley, Broad, NC Community College System President Martin Lancaster, and representatives from Golden LEAF and the biotech industry joined Chancellor James L. Oblinger on the dais in celebration of the groundbreaking.

The chancellor put the facility into perspective. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that BTEC has the potential to mean as much to the economic growth of North Carolina as the Research Triangle Park has meant to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area.”

While North Carolina ranks among the top three biotechnology regions in the United States, a lack of well-trained workers needed for the coming boom in biopharmaceuticals could threaten the state’s place among national leaders in the emerging biomanufacturing industry.

BTEC will be the largest facility of its kind in the nation, and will answer the state’s need for biomanufacturing training. Through partnerships with community colleges, BTEC’s distance education and on-site programs will train up to 2,000 to 3,000 students and prospective employees per year for the state’s biomanufacturing industry.

Biomanufacturing companies create new end products from living cells or their components. These products include medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, enzymes, amino acids, veterinary medicines and related products that improve lives, create jobs and boost the state’s economy.

The state’s biotechnology industry currently employs about 20,000 people at almost 200 companies. Relatively few new workers currently receive the needed training, while some estimates place the need at roughly 3,000 new employees per year.

“In the past three years, we’ve seen more than a billion dollars invested in biotech and biomanufacturing in North Carolina,” Easley said. “More than 2,000 jobs have been created.”

BTEC will simulate a biomanufac-turing pilot plant facility capable of producing biopharmaceutical products and packaging them in a sterile environment. It also will include support training and education classrooms, laboratories, and building and process utilities. The facility will be outfitted so that students will gain experience using the same large-scale equipment they would use on the job.

The center also will help attract new biomanufacturing companies to North Carolina; assist the development of new technologies for production of value-added biopharmaceuticals, protein-based products and chemicals from organisms, plants, cell cultures and other bio-based systems; and enhance the creation of rural biomanufacturing jobs and new agribusiness opportunities.

“NC State’s legacy is one of listening and responding to the needs of North Carolina,” Oblinger said. “BTEC is a perfect example. This type of education and training exists nowhere else in the country at this scale and should serve as a magnet for new business expansions and relocations by this critical sector for our state’s economy.

“The center will be a major new force for statewide economic development and job creation in the biomanufacturing, pharmaceutical and related agricultural industries. Through partnerships with industry, other academic institutions and with support from Golden LEAF, we’re creating a tremendous opportunity for North Carolina to lead the world in biomanufacturing.”

Golden LEAF has provided about $34 million to design, build and equip BTEC, as part of an overall $60 million grant for biomanufacturing research training at North Carolina Central University and for five Regional Skill Centers in the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS). The NCCCS also will operate a BioNetwork learning center within BTEC.

Dr. Peter Kilpatrick, head of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and founding director of BTEC, said, “This training consortium will mobilize to bring unique job skills to future generations of North Carolinians.

“Students from throughout the state’s universities and community colleges could come to the center for a variety of one-to-three-week educational programs, for modules that could serve as course credits in their B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. curricula, or for seminars as part of their science degrees.”

Lancaster added that BTEC “will provide students with a hands-on experience not available anywhere else.”

In addition to BTEC programs, several existing and planned degrees at NC State will prepare students to work in the biomanufacturing industry. For example: a graduate certificate program in molecular biotechnology; a biotechnology-pharmaceutical concentration within the Master of Business Administration (MBA), which will prepare students for managerial positions in the biotechnology industry; a biomolecular engineering degree with a bioprocessing focus; and a new bioprocessing science degree in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Posted June 17, 2005

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