Florian Schacht from the MSc Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship class 2020 talks about a visit to Future Bio-Manufacturing Research Hub and SYNBIOCHEM as part of the Emerging Technologies unit.
What did you learn during your visit?
“We listened to a presentation about biotechnology and its future potential. Biotechnology will change the world due to its various applications starting from better menthol production to human genome editing and enhancement.
“We walked through the lab and saw a variety of interesting and modern machines that were able to analyse DNA strands partially, or even fully, automated. Automation is very important because it helps with cutting costs.”
Did the presentation link to a particular part of your course?
“Yes, it was linked to the lecture on global challenges and emerging technologies. Part of this course is a blogpost assignment that focuses, in my case, on genome editing and a technology called CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats).
“Therefore, it was very helpful to visit an institution that actually performs these activities. I was able to ask questions directly to experts who gave me useful insights for my assignment.”
Are there any business applications of this technology?
“There are hundreds of possible business applications, most of them are in the field of biotechnology or medicine. There are many examples of interesting startups.
“I personally think that CRISPR or genome editing will be the next big revolution in society. However, there will be many discussions about the ethical dilemmas of genome editing as well as problems of how to govern this emerging technology.
“Overall, the visit was extremely interesting and gave us useful insights into the biotechnology sector.”
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