Biotechnology 

Overview

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Sustainable production of biofuels, biochemicals, pharmaceuticals, clothes, food and other consumables is a necessary alternative to current production methods and requires massive education of engineers within biotechnology.

Biotechnology engineers work in all phases of society’s development towards bio based economy. Biochemical and molecular biological tasks include mining of genes, organisms, or natural compounds from natural resources as well as design and construction of recombinant cell-factories. Fermentation tasks include design, optimization, and running of small to large-scale fermentation processes. 

Other tasks include purification and quality control of proteins and biochemical - and most importantly, the invention of new methods to use biotechnology for the benefit of society. All of these tasks require specialized biotechnology engineers that are educated in a combination of scientific research and industrial application. 

Biotech industry is an expanding billion-dollar industry offering a promising future for Biotechnology engineers whether employed in a large biotech company or starting up small companies as bio-entrepreneurs.

Study programme focus

Through the Biotechnology programme from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) , you will learn to apply this knowledge on biotechnological problems, ranging from basic research issues to the development of new cell factories and the study of their performance in bioreactors. You will acquire the relevant competencies for collecting and analysing wide-ranging types of data using statistics, bioinformatics, and mathematical models.

Focus areas

To direct the studies towards the different tasks of the biotechnology engineer, four study lines are offered:

• BioSystems Engineering

• Cell factory Engineering

• Protein Engineering

• Fermentation Based BioManufacturing

Career opportunities

Bioengineers have many career opportunities in Denmark, which hosts some of the world’s leading biotech companies. In the rest of the world, biotechnology engineers are highly attractive in the global bio based industry which is experiencing rapid growth. DTU’s study programme in biotechnology is primarily a supplier of graduates and PhDs for, among others:

• Biotech industry, e.g. Novozymes A/S and Novo Nordisk A/S

• Pharmaceutical industry, e.g. LEO Pharma A/S and Lundbeck A/S

• Food industry, e.g. Chr. Hansen A/S and Arla

• Research community at universities in Denmark and abroad