Overview

High-value commodity chemicals are the backbone of modern industry and economy.

In the context of the UK economy, the annual turnover of the chemical industry is around £50 billion, which is about 5% of the total UK GDP. Ironically, this integral part of economy is also contributing to almost 16% of the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, making the sector amongst the largest industrial gas emitters. Thus, converting the fossil fuel-based chemical industry sector into a sustainable and carbon-neutral industry is essential to warrant a NetZero, GHG emissions-free future.

In this talk, I will discuss my lab’s efforts to design and develop bespoke biological cell factories that use GHGs as feedstock for manufacturing commodity chemicals sustainably.

Speaker

Dr Ahsan Islam, Senior Lecturer in Biochemical Engineering, Loughborough University

Ahsan obtained BSc in Chemical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 2003, MSc in Advanced Chemical Engineering with Biotechnology from Imperial College London in 2005, and PhD in Chemical Engineering with specialization in Genome Biology and Bioinformatics from the University of Toronto in 2014. He conducted postdoctoral research in Metabolic Engineering and Synthetic Biology with Professors Gregory Stephanopoulos and Kristala Prather in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2014-2017.

Ahsan is currently a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Biochemical Engineering at Loughborough University, UK. His research interests lie in the areas of systems and synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, computational biology, bioinformatics, and environmental biotechnology.

The material presented has not been peer-reviewed. Any opinions are the presenter’s own and do not necessarily represent those of IChemE or the Biochemical Engineering Special Interest Group. The information is given in good faith but without any liability on the part of IChemE.

Time

13:00–14:00 BST.

Software

The presentation will be delivered via Microsoft Teams. We recommend downloading the app from the Microsoft website, rather than using the web portal.