NIIMBL Announces First Faculty Fellows Program Recipient: Dr. Sarah W. Harcum

NEWARK, Del., Dec. 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL) announces the first recipient of the new Faculty Fellows Program, Dr. Sarah W. Harcum of Clemson University. The NIIMBL Faculty Fellows Program is a pilot program that provides financial support for faculty and instructional staff at universities and community colleges to pursue a sabbatical with NIIMBL industry member organizations or directly with NIIMBL.

The Faculty Fellows program facilitates a higher level of collaboration between academics and industry. Dr. Harcum will share her cell culture expertise with the Process Intensification (PI) Testbed team and gain practical experience in protein purification.

"To grow and innovate at the speed our modern world demands, collaboration is imperative. Bringing experts together from diverse background and thoughts, in this case academia and industry, has proven to be a formula that accelerates innovation and bridges the gap between academic research and industry needs," stated John Balchunas, director of workforce development at NIIMBL.

The purpose of the NIIMBL Faculty Fellows Program is to create a diverse and engaged community of academics that can work collaboratively and effectively with industry. NIIMBL Faculty Fellows will gain valuable experience and exposure to state-of-the-art biopharmaceutical manufacturing, learn about real-world industry challenges, seed new industry-academic partnerships, and strengthen the overall member community.

From January through December 2023, Dr. Harcum will work with industry leaders who designed the PI Testbed at NIIMBL headquarters in Newark, Delaware, to gain a better understanding of barriers to the commercial adoption of continuous biomanufacturing. Dr. Harcum has been a faculty member at Clemson University since 2002, currently in Bioengineering. Prior to Clemson, she worked at the United States Food and Drug Administration in the Division of Monoclonal Antibodies and at New Mexico State University in Chemical Engineering with a joint appointment in Molecular Biology.

NIIMBL opened the Faculty Fellows Program request for proposals in March 2022 and continues to accept applications through December 31, 2022.

Visit NIIMBL.org for more information about the program and to learn more about NIIMBL.

The National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL) is a public-private partnership whose mission is to accelerate biopharmaceutical innovation, support the development of standards that enable more efficient and rapid manufacturing capabilities, and educate and train a world-leading biopharmaceutical manufacturing workforce while fundamentally advancing U.S. competitiveness in this industry. NIIMBL is part of Manufacturing USA^®, a diverse network of  federally-sponsored manufacturing innovation institutes, and is funded through a cooperative agreement with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the U.S. Department of Commerce with significant additional support from its members.

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SOURCE National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL)