Benefits

Benefits

Benefits

Since graduation, I have been working at 3M in product development. In my current job, I often am asked to interact with and evaluate researchers from various universities, research institutions, and business groups. The training grant provided an opportunity to focus on cross-disciplinary interactions and networking. These are very important skills that are not provided within any single department to the same level. These skills are very relevant to transitioning out of academia and functioning at a high level in ‘the real world.’

Katie Wlaschin — Advanced Product Development Specialist, 3M, Former trainee

Cross-Disciplinary Training

Trainees come from diverse academic backgrounds, including biochemistry, chemistry, microbiology, genetics, and chemical, computer, biomedical, and electrical engineering. Engineering and life sciences hold complementary core competencies required for biotechnology research. Our program strives to bridge the two disciplines by encouraging life science students to apply engineering principles to research questions while conversely training engineering students in the fundamentals of molecular, cellular, and genetic processes of biological systems.

Outstanding Faculty

Our training program brings together faculty with expertise in biological, physical, and engineering disciplines. Collectively our program faculty train students in fundamental biochemical, molecular and cellular sciences, biological systems analysis, biomedical and bio-engineering, reaction engineering, and computational sciences. Our faculty are at the forefront of their disciplines and they are eager to push their research constantly forward into new directions.

Career Skills and Professional Development

An emphasis of the training grant program is helping trainees develop professional skills. Workshops, seminars and site-visits provide instruction in intellectual property, project management and planning, effective communication skills, and reproducibility and quality assurance. Our Alumni network, Advisory Board, and bi-annual Alumni Symposium serve as key resources for career insights and planning, and for professional development and networking. Trainees also gain hands on leadership and organizational skills by organizing workshops, symposia, and seminars.

Overview

Overview

Program Overview

Biotechnology Training Grant Itasca Session
NIH Logo

For over twenty-five years the Biotechnology Training Program at the University of Minnesota has aimed to train the next generation of biotechnology innovators, creators and leaders seeking out the frontiers of their fields. Supported by National Institute of General Medical Science grant T32-GM008347 from the National Institute of Health, we strive to prepare highly skilled students with the cross-disciplinary skills, knowledge, and broad perspectives needed to solve challenging questions and problems in biotechnology that rarely follow traditional disciplinary boundaries and involve fast changing technologies. Each year, this program provides financial support for sixteen graduate students and offers opportunities for collaborative research, industrial internships, international research opportunities, and specialized retreats and seminars.

Joe Buchanan

Coursework & Seminars

“There was an emphasis on soft skills that I think was very beneficial. It also helped to expand our horizons beyond our own department by having the lab visits to different departments, which I think was an incredibly unique experience.”

Joe Buchman, 3rd Year Graduate Student, Chemistry, University of Minnesota, Current trainee

 Program Benefits

“The training grant provided an opportunity to focus on cross-disciplinary interactions and networking. These are very important skills that are not provided within any single department to the same level. These skills are very relevant to transitioning out of academia and functioning at a high level in the real world.”

Katie Wlaschin, Advanced Product Development Specialist, 3M, Former trainee

 

David Chau

Industry Connections and Internships

“The ability to do an internship during my graduate career was extremely helpful as it helped bridge my academic career to research being carried out in an industrial setting.”

David Chau, PhD Candidate, Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Current trainee

Beyond the Classroom

“I think the retreats were genuinely the most helpful aspect of the grant, since informal discussion is amazingly fruitful when it comes not only to learning about the research fields of others, but in spurring thoughtful dialogue about your own projects as well.”

Adam Woodruff, Vacuum Physicist, MSU NSCL/FRIB, Former trainee

International Exchange

“The opportunity to see research and life as a graduate student in another country is something that would not have happened without the training grant program… I’m also not sure I would have ever tried sushi in the US if I hadn’t gone to Japan… My 6 year old won’t eat cheese but she loves eel – go figure!”

Heather Haemig, Assistant Professor, Chemistry, Gustavus Adolphus College, Former trainee

Coursework

Coursework

Coursework

Joe Buchanan

There was an emphasis on soft skills that I think was very beneficial. It also helped to expand our horizons beyond our own department by having the lab visits to different departments, which I think was an incredibly unique experience.

Joe Buchman, 3rd Year Graduate Student, University of Minnesota, Current Trainee

 

In 2016, the Advisory Board and Program Directors initiated a redesign of the training grant program to stay at the forefront of current developments in the field of biotechnology. Our new program theme – From Genomes and Biological Systems via Discovery and Synthesis to Products and Processes is divided into four thematic areas that serve as a conceptual framework for our cross-disciplinary curriculum. We have organized this program around areas critical for the future of biotechnology. These threads will guide the selection of course topics, workshops and seminars, retreats, and the development of our summer workshop. Our program has two core instructional components taken by trainees during their first year on the training grant. Our core course, Systems Analysis of Biological Processes, and a new summer workshop.

Program Theme

From Genomes and Biological Systems via Discovery and Synthesis to Products and Processes

Genome – Engineering, Regulation, Interaction

Voytas (Lead), Dunny, Wei-Shou Hu, Katagiri , Myers, O’Connor,Smanski

This group will give our trainees instructions in genome engineering, computational analysis, and visualization of biological interaction networks.


Systems – Analysis, Tools

Haynes (Lead), Arriaga, Bernlohr, Distefano,Griffin, Hegeman, John D. Lipscomb, Will Pomerantz, Dan Knights, Daniel Schmidt

Trainees will receive instruction from these trainers in omics approaches and the application of cutting-edge probes and tools.


Discovery and Design – Synthesis, Fabrication

Burckhard Seelig (Lead), Samira Azarin, Erin Carlson, Mikael Elias, Ben Hackel, Romas Kazlauskas, Yiannis Kaznessis, Efrosini Kokkoli, Casim Sarkar, Claudia Schmidt-Dannert

Trainers in this group are interested in the discovery and design of new protein and metabolic pathways with the goal of generating new cellular or protein functions for biotechnological applications. They use synthetic biology and computational design methods to create emergent functions. They combine molecular engineering strategies with computational design, thereby exposing trainees to quantitative and rational molecular design.


Processes and Product – Molecules, Biomaterials

Brenda Ogle (Lead), Victor Barocas, Kevin Dorfman, Jeffrey A. Gralnick, George Karypis, Michael J. Sadowsky, Wei Shen, Robert T. Tranquillo, Lawrence P. Wackett, Chun Wang, Kechun Zhang

This group of faculty is experienced at implementing scientific discoveries and developments into applied technologies and products. They will expose trainees to aspects of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Core Course


Originally developed by our training grant faculty in 2006 as a new Systems Analysis of Biological Processescourse to teach quantitative concepts to our trainees, this course is now offered university-wide course with enrollment by students from different colleges. Trainees usually take this course in their second spring semester. This course is team-taught by seven faculty members.

This course is unique at the University of Minnesota, as lectures are accompanied by hands-on tutorial sessions and analysis of actual experimental data from faculty research using the computational and mathematical concepts taught in this class. Students perform data analysis throughout the semester as part of homework assignments and projects. For example, students learn to assemble microbial genomes and perform RNA-seq data analysis and then identify metabolic engineering targets to increase the production of an antibiotic or fine chemical.

Summer Workshops


The summer workshop is a new initiative launched in 2016. Students will participate in this workshop during the summer after they have completed the core course as a foundation for this workshop. They will design and engineer recombinant production platforms for chemicals (e.g. pharmaceutical, platform, or fine chemical) or biologics. Trainees with engineering and life sciences background will work together on a project. They will be required to combine their knowledge and approaches and to effectively communicate and exchange concepts and methods with each other. This workshop will be organized as initial sets of instructional sessions and a final project presentation session several weeks apart during which the teams will be working on their projects. Project teams will be mentored by faculty. Projects are chosen so that trainees apply methods learned in our core course. Trainees will use approaches from our thematic program focus areas.

Multi-Disciplinary Seminars


Our muti-disciplinary seminars focus on opening trainees up to different laboratories and research. Seminars are held in different faculty laboratories, or through visits to local industry partners. This hands-on experience allows trainees to gain a broad understanding of research developments outside of the traditional classroom.

Further Education


All trainees are encouraged to attend national and international conferences and workshops in North America to broaden their perspectives. Trainees may receive a small annual travel stipend to attend conferences.

Trainees are also encouraged to attend campus workshops, short courses, and symposia, particularly in the area of commercialization. Trainees are also invited to present posters at a variety of workshops, short courses, and symposia organized on campus. Past workshop topics inlcude synthetic, chemical, and stem cell biology.