State funds allocated to BTEC support its educational and training programs, which are based on hands-on instruction in state-of-the-art facilities. The BBDC funding provided by the Kenan Institute is helping BTEC staff, graduate and postdoctoral students participate in industry analytical and process development projects, which are not funded by the State. BTEC provides matching funds in the amount of $2.5 million in facilities for this effort.
In addition, BTEC is providing leverage in the amount of $350,000 per year in staff salaries to support the analytical and process services program. BTEC has over $300,000 in bioprocess services projects for small and large companies in NC. BBDC also enabled BTEC to succeed in getting three major grants from the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), and more recently, from the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Institute (CESSMI) and the Bio-industrial Manufacturing Institute (BioMADE).
In addition to participating in several NIIMBL grants with NC State faculty, BTEC initiated a long-term contract with NIIMBL to develop a testbed for studies on adaptive process control methodologies to produce biopharmaceuticals and the development of process and raw materials data ontologies that can be disseminated to NIIMBL companies. This program provided BTEC with approximately $1.3 million in new equipment, and several hundred thousand dollars for support of personnel, supplies, and other related expenditures.
These funds are also supporting efforts on the development of new projects to be proposed for the AIM-Bio expansion in Raman spectroscopy and mRNA in-vitro synthesis and have played a key role in helping the development of novel membranes that can increase the productivity of biologics manufacturing up to 10-fold. The services provided by BBDC are playing an increasingly important role in the ability of NC State to establish new partnerships and develop new proposals for future funding from industry, non-profits, and federal sources.