Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) Associate in Optical Engineering for Biopharmaceutical Protein Analysis

This is an exciting opportunity for someone with a postgraduate/doctoral degree in a subject area of Optical Physics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or a related field. The post holder will lead a cutting-edge innovation project that seeks to provide rapid online characterization of product yield and purity, enabling GSK to significantly compress process development times and costs, and give new insights into product characteristics at a stage of development that was previously unachievable. Based at the GSK’s Stevenage Office, the KTP Associate will apply data analysis in a British multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company that will significantly reduce the analytical time and costs for monoclonal antibodies and complex molecular formats during bioprocess development, using optical analytical technologies.

This will involve creating a GSK-compliant version of UCL’s TRIAX instrument and integrating it onto the GSK process discovery platform, as well as engaging with GSK’s bioprocessing and analytical development teams to understand technical challenges and operator interactions and demonstrating the impact of the inline analytical instruments on the accuracy and speed of GSKs Process Discovery platform.
Plus, the successful candidate will be part of the prestigious 50-year-old national Knowledge Transfer Partnership programme offering a dedicated professional development budget, a network of fellow Associates from many disciplines and training and mentoring opportunities. The Associate will also have the opportunity to write publications about their work alongside the academic and company team.

The KTP Associate is responsible for the day-to-day running of the project. The Associate will be expected to show initiative and independence of thought in applied research and embedding knowledge. They will also demonstrate inquisitiveness and project management skills in their industry-based role. Specifically, this includes:

1. work with the academic team to understand TRIAX and TRIFLE technologies and observe measurements by trained users
2. transferring and compliance testing of the TRIAX instrument
3. integrate the TRIAX and TRIFLE instruments into the GSK Process Discovery platform
4. integrate the TRIAX software control and analysis algorithms into the GSK workflow within the current Process Discovery platform
5. demonstrate the impact of the inline analytical instruments on the accuracy and speed of GSKs Process Discovery platform
6. disseminate the analytical technology, its capabilities, and potential impact of the online analytical instrument to the wider global GSK teams