Teesside University’s National Horizons Centre in Darlington is set to play a key role in the regeneration of the region. The centre’s new director, Dr Jen Vanderhoven, talks here about out her ambitious vision to make the Tees Valley a global hub for the bioscience industries
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has placed the world of bioscience firmly at the forefront of public consciousness.
From its base in Central Park, the £22.3m National Horizons Centre, a national centre of excellence for the bioscience industries, is destined to pay a vital role in the development of the ever-growing industrial sector in the region.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has shown precisely why bioscience is so important,” says Dr Jen Vanderhoven. “From vaccine manufacturing to testing, we have seen a real need for hundreds, if not thousands, of highly skilled jobs in this sector.
“Training these people and ensuring that they have the necessary skills will be critical and, as a university-based institution, we’re perfectly placed to do just that.
“However, in order to succeed we need to make sure that we are providing exactly what employers want and a key part of my job will be engaging with the region’s bioscience companies to find out what they need from their workforce.”
This is a challenge with which Jen will be more than familiar, having a vast amount of experience working at the nexus between academia and industry. She joins Teesside University from Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies where part of her role as Vice-President involved developing a five-year research and innovation programme which looked at how the company worked with universities to address the challenges of manufacturing biologics.
Prior to that, Jen was the manager of a Government-funded Industrial Biotechnology Network. In this position, she helped to co-author the UK National Industrial Biotechnology Strategy to 2030, which involved working with more than 150 bioscience companies and academics across the UK.
The National Horizons Centre, which opened last year, is a national centre for teaching, research and training in the bioscience industries. It is working to address the growth needs of the bio-based industries set to transform the UK economy, including biologics, industrial biotechnology and bio-pharmaceuticals.
As director, Jen plans to work with key stakeholders to build a strategic regional partnership to promote the Tees Valley as a leading region for bioscience research.
She uses the example of the National Horizons Centre’s Central Park base as an example of the close cooperation which will help drive forward this ambition. The centre sits as part of a cluster of excellence which includes Teesside University’s Centre for Professional and Executive Development, as well the National Biologics Centre operated by the Centre for Process Innovation.
Naturally, any talk of a geographical cluster for bioscience invites comparison with the ‘Golden Triangle’ centred around Oxford, Cambridge and London. Challenging the South East for primacy in the life science sector is a lofty ambition, but Jen believes the National Horizons Centre can act as a lodestone, bringing together the various businesses operating in the sector. By helping to attract talent and investment to the North-East, the National Horizons Centre can ultimately help shift the centre of gravity in the bioscience sector further towards this region.
“We’ve already got some truly global companies operating here such as GlaxoSmithKline, Fujifilm and Quorn, along with some fantastic SMEs producing some truly innovative products” she says. “I really believe we can work together to put the North-East on the map.”
Jen is also keen to utilise leading edge research from other disciplines at Teesside University and apply it to the work being done at the National Horizons Centre. In particular, the role of digital within the bioscience
industry promises huge potential.
In one such example, researchers at the centre have been working to develop a virtual reality bioreactor. Not only can this provide a safe virtual learning environment to train process operators in various emergency scenarios, helping to prevent costly mistakes, but in a post-Covid world where face-to-face contact may be limited, students can be taught processes and equipment-use from within their homes.
“I want the National Horizons Centre to be a sustainable and agile environment where people want to work, learn and collaborate can come together,” says Jen.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has not only shown how important the bioscience sector is within our economy, but also how close cooperation between public and private institutions can yield fantastic results.
“The centre is perfectly placed to drive forward innovation and growth in this region and establish the North-East as a global hub for the bioscience industries.”
For more information about the centre, visit www.tees.ac.uk/nhc
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