The RAFT 10 programme looks great with academic and industry experts ready to inform and excite with some stimulating lectures. Our session chairs have put together a great programme and all we need now are the poster presenters and attendees that will make RAFT 10 the most successful meeting yet in this very popular series. As a result of positive feedback from the previous meeting, we are returning to stunning Marco Island, FL from November 3-6, 2013.

With four lecture sessions, two round tables, a poster session, exhibit hall and opportunities for discussions at receptions, meals and the banquet, RAFT will, as always, allow delegates the chance to see some stellar science while providing plenty of opportunities for discussion, debate and networking with your peers from all over the world. All of this with a little time left over for walks on the beach and discussions by the pool. Anyone active in fermentation research, or looking to get better informed in this crucial area for manufacturing in biotechnology and industrial biology, should plan on attending this meeting.

The RAFT sessions will cover a wide range of topics that affect all fermentation scientists. The program is available online http://www.simbhq.org/raft/program-schedule/.

We start off on Sunday afternoon by looking at the basis for any fermentation – the bugs themselves. Convenors Matt DeLisa of Cornell University and Gavin Barnard of Lilly will bring together speakers to look at Advances in Fermentation Expression.

On Monday there will be an extended session (8 speakers) presenting advancements in the tools for adoption of quality by design (QbD) – design of experiment (DoE) and process analytical technology (PAT). There should be something for everyone in this session which will look at cutting edge methods and technologies. Jesse McCool of Lonza and Rosa Dominguez of Green Biologics will be managing this session. Their goal is to give attendees a status update of where the industry is in terms of adopting QbD and show the audience how and when the key tools necessary for driving QbD are being deployed. After the afternoon break Tim Davies of Green Biologics will chair a roundtable addressing how we build our industry for the future by educating fermentation scientists. Academics involved in fermentation and biomanufacturing education and potential employers of these young scientists will give their perspectives, hopefully with lively input from the audience. The day will end with a reception and poster session chaired by Ali Mohagheghi of NREL and Clementina Dellomonaco of Dupont.

On Tuesday an extended session on novel process and reactor design chaired by David Laidlaw of Kuhner and Mike Flickinger of NC State will satisfy our appetite for new and flashy kit that we can expect to see on the market in the near future. This session will consist of cutting edge scientific and technology advances, not company sales pitches, but will give an insight into how we will be working and what we will be working with in the coming years. This will be followed after the afternoon break by a round table on overcoming challenges to commercialization of bioprocesses chaired by Steve van Dien of Genomatica. We will find how prominent biotech companies have overcome or are dealing with getting that great process to market. We all need to cross that valley of death at some point to create a thriving company – find out how others are meeting the challenge.

On the final morning of the meeting, our big guns, Tiffany Rau of Lilly and Stuart Stocks of Novozymes, will blow away any cobwebs left over from Tuesday evening’s banquet with a look at process excellence and high quality manufacturing. Their speakers will address the key aspects for getting processes that work, not just once but every time. By the end of the session you should be ready to head back to your labs and companies all over the world to do better and bigger fermentation research.

RAFT 10 is coming – are you? This is the event of the year for fermentation scientists to meet their peers, discuss the science and invigorate their research and practices. Register now and join us in Marco Island.

Registration is open and there is still time to submit poster abstracts to share your research and get feedback from experts in your field. Go to the SIMB website for more information.

[sws_divider_line] Written by E. Timothy Davies, PhD, Green Biologics Ltd. He is also member of the SIMB board of directors and chair of RAFT 10.