MASTER OF TECHNOLOGY DEGREE IN INDUSTRIAL BIOTECHNOLOGY

MASTER OF TECHNOLOGY DEGREE IN INDUSTRIAL BIOTECHNOLOGY

The National Biotechnology Authority of Zimbabwe defines Industrial Biotechnology as ‘the use of microorganisms and biomolecules to make products of economic importance’, while the Biotechnology Innovation Organisation describes it as ‘new industrial processes that can be taken from lab study to commercial application in a very short time period (i.e. two to five years).’ Therefore, the guiding philosophy of the MTech Degree in Industrial Biotechnology programme involves training professionals who can take economically relevant biochemical products from lab study to commercial application in a short time period.

INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES (ILO)

At the end of the programme graduates are expected to:

• apply computational methods to predict the structure-function relationships of an industrially relevant biochemical
• cultivate a commercially relevant plant, fungi, yeast or bacteria
• extract and purify an industrially relevant biochemical from a plant, fungi, yeast or bacteria
• identify the gene(s) responsible for the production of a commercially relevant biochemical by a plant, fungi, yeast or bacteria
• design a procedure to manipulate gene(s) for the mass-production of a commercially relevant biochemical by a yeast or bacteria
• design a bioprocess for the mass-cultivation and mass-production of an industrially relevant biochemical by a yeast or bacteria
• apply design thinking in the creation or improvement of a commercially relevant biochemical production-based business

Programme Structure