Field of Work
Bioprocess engineering is a core science in the development of new production processes for chemistry, fine chemical engineering and the pharmaceutical industry. Quantitative understanding of intracellular processes provides the basis for transferring bioprocesses as efficiently as possible from the lab to production scale. Revenue of more than EUR 100 billion is already generated worldwide through sales of biotechnical products. Studies estimate this figure will increase to more than EUR 300 billion in 2017. These estimates do not even include activities in the pharmaceutical sector such as the production of new pharmaceuticals with mammalian cells, which are already worth approx. EUR 50 to 60 billion and fast increasing.
Biotechnical production of basic chemical substances based on sugar is a highly interesting alternative to the previously pursued mineral-oil-based syntheses, thereby providing a key cornerstone for future, sustainable access to essential source materials for today’s technological world.
Personal Information
Ralf Takors, born in Koblenz in 1966, studied mechanical and process engineering at RWTH Aachen, where he also obtained his habilitation with a dissertation entitled “Metabolic and Bioprocess Engineering – A Fruitful Symbiosis”. He worked at Evonik Degussa GmbH from 2004 to 2009 and has been the director of the Institute of Biochemical Engineering, University of Stuttgart, since 2009.
Prof. Takors holds leadership positions in various professional associations, including "Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering", "Engineering Life Science" and the "Center of Systems Biology" at the University of Stuttgart. Since 2018, Takors has coordinated the DFG priority program "InterZell", which focuses on the generation of microbial flora in mixed culture.