Our challenge

Welcome to the Bioprocessing for the Circular Economy Challenge! This is a multidisciplinary module that brings together chemists and bioprocessing engineers to consider and address current challenges in their industries. Through innovative and exciting learning experiences, students are introduced to the basics of economy and economic models and explore sustainability within the chemical and biological sectors, considering the implications of moving towards the circular economy, principles of green chemistry and use of renewable energy and resources. Students learn about key challenges that affect science-based companies, and in particular challenges to our industry partners. These partners provide cutting-edge content and have co-designed specific challenge-based projects for students to work together to address. Teams work together in a Hackathon to develop a novel solution to these real-world challenges. Students are encouraged to develop a solution which embraces a multi-disciplinary approach, and consider both systemic and holistic thinking. Module content will be delivered in a blended fashion, including face to face (hybrid) lectures, multimedia content, ebooks and guest-interviews that integrate the course content. Transversal skills such as creative thinking, futures literacy, teamwork and sustainability literacy are developed in this module, and will be assessed through a number of innovative assessments such as: interactive orals, hackathon, e-portfolio and reflective practices.