Start of the research project BIOINDUSTRY 4.0

Industrial Biotechnology (IB) is a Key Enabling Technology for the circular bio-economy, industrial renewal and European manufacturing autonomy. Its development forms a vital part of EU’s strategy to become climate neutral in 2050. To support digitalization of IB, BIOINDUSTRY 4.0 will create new services delivered by European research infrastructures (RI). These services will address several challenges, focusing on the acceleration of bio-process development pipelines. Drawing on the complementary skills of its consortium, BIOINDUSTRY 4.0 will develop data-driven approaches, exploiting AI to empower novel decision support systems and digital twins, the latter being to better design bio-processes and enable their realtime online control. To complete these services, BIOINDUSTRY 4.0 will also develop data and metadata standards to generate high quality, interoperable multi-scale bio-process data, the technical basis for trusted data networks and process analytical devices to provide real-time online monitoring of bio-processes. Once deployed, these RI services will provide Users with access to cutting-edge technologies that can be used singly or in an integrated way, covering whole R&D pipelines. Integrated services will be delivered by a distributed RI, conferring Europe with a unique R&D test-bed for bio-process development and a competitive advantage with respect to global competition. To succeed, BIOINDUSTRY 4.0 brings together 6 EU RIs, 1 global company, 2 innovative EU SMEs and several research teams around an ambitious 4-year workplan that will be implemented in consultation with IB stakeholders, using a codesign strategy to specify goals.

The following key objectives were established:

- Create tools to produce high-quality, interoperable datasets for data-driven methods and services
- Design tools to expand the use of microbial biodiversity in the IB sector
- Produce DTs for use as a bio-process design tool and as a component of an autonomous, real-time control system
- Develop novel PAT instruments to achieve real-time, in-process monitoring of bioprocesses
- Demonstrate the use of advanced technologies to design and control processes
- Provide training for RI operators
- Conduct transdisciplinary work to secure buy-in from IB stakeholder

You can find more information here.