From laboratory to lecture hall: developing bioprocesses and students

Organisms surround us, and they produce vastly more materials than we could hope to understand. Many of these materials have the potential to improve lives and generate new industries. But to realise this value, someone needs to develop a process to harness the organism, to convince it to produce the particular product, and then to capture the product. The task of the bioprocess engineer, therefore, is to look from the microscopic scale, to the reactor scale, to the process scale and to the economic, societal and environmental scale to leverage organisms’ abilities. Prof Robbie Pott’s inaugural lecture focuses on these different scales – bioprospecting to find interesting and useful organisms; designing bioreactors in which to cultivate and produce; creating separation systems that catch value; and developing process designs that can be commercialised. He takes a whistle-stop tour through a decade of research and more than 20 postgraduate researchers’ work to outline how curiosity-driven research can be rewarding (and sometimes difficult). With the help of fantastic students, driven and supportive colleagues and collaborators, and often a bit of luck, bioprocess engineering can offer implementable solutions to real-world problems.

WATCH THE INAUGURAL LECTURE HERE

Short biography

Prof Robbie Pott works at the intersection of chemical engineering, molecular biology, bioprocess engineering, and biotechnology. He is a professor of Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stellenbosch University (SU).

He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Cape Town and read for his PhD at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, under the supervision of Profs John Dennis (in Chemical Engineering) and Chris Howe (in Molecular Biology). His doctoral research focused on the conversion of waste glycerol into hydrogen, using photosynthetic bacteria.

Upon completion of his PhD, Pott returned to South Africa to join the University of Cape Town as a postdoctoral research fellow. In 2015, he moved across the peninsula to SU to take up a lectureship, and has grown a significant research group in Chemical Engineering in the years since. As postgraduate supervisor, he has guided 26 master’s students and six PhD candidates through to graduation. He currently supervises eight master’s students and five PhD candidates, and is mentor to two postdoctoral research fellows.

He has served in several administrative and service roles at both departmental and faculty levels, including as postgraduate coordinator for the Department, academic head of a focus area for the structured master’s programme, and head of the Faculty of Engineering’s Innovation Council. Prof Pott’s research often straddles the boundary between pure academic work, and science capable of being commercialised. While his work primarily focuses on bioprocess engineering, he also has a strong interest in engineering education and has been involved in many initiatives and publications attempting to improve undergraduate and postgraduate engineering programmes.