Speaker Spotlight – ‘Christian Witz’ : 6th Annual MarketsandMarkets Next-Gen Bioprocessing Conference!

The 6th Annual MarketsandMarkets Next-Gen Bioprocessing Conference kicks off on the 6th & 7th of October 2022 in London. With 100+ attendees & stellar presentations from over 15+ industry experts and leaders, the countdown has well & truly begun.

We’re extremely excited & eager to hear the keynote speakers sharing their findings, ideas & foresight into the future of topics surrounding cell culture & bioproduction, downstream processing & continuous biomanufacturing and cell and gene therapy analytics.

As part of the build-up to the conference we sat down with one of our speakers, Christian Witz, who is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Technische Universität Graz to share with us a brief snapshot of his presentation.

1. What are the recent advances in cell and gene therapy and current challenges that you believe need immediate attention?

The Corona vaccine production has set a benchmark for how fast new products are brought into the market for widespread use. In-silico methods are one type of the new technologies that enable increased development and scale-up speed. Optimal operating points and process parameters can be acquired either with data-driven models in the process development phase or with mechanistic models in the scale-up phase.

2. What will be the key takeaways from your presentation which will help in expanding the knowledge base of the attendees?

How a modern simulation software can help you in the design, scale-up, or troubleshooting of your reactor.
Mechanistic models can make predictions about the optimal operating conditions of large-scale reactors.
How a physics-based scale-up can reduce the risk, the experimental effort, and the time-to-market.

ABOUT:
Christian Witz did his Ph.D. in the group of Prof. Khinast at the Institute of Process and Particle Engineering on the topic of multiphase reactor simulation using the lattice Boltzmann method. He then established the Computational Bioprocess Engineering group at the institute to find, test, validate, and interconnect highly efficient algorithms for graphic processing units (GPUs) to simulate the physical process inside devices like the bioreactor. This in-house codebase is the basis for the spin-off SimVantage, which provides a cloud-based simulation software and consulting for stirred and/or aerated reactors.