John Borland Award for Innovation Inaugurated

Britest Members’ Day 2016, our principal annual showcase and networking event, saw the inauguration of a new prestigious award designed to recognise and encourage innovation within the Britest community.

The John Borland Award for Innovation will be awarded annually by the Board of Directors to a person or persons who, in the opinion of the Scientific Advisory Board has made a significant contribution in this area. The first winners of the John Borland Award were Newcastle University-based Engineering Doctorate student Kirsty MacLachlan, and her project supervisors Professor Jarka Glassey and Dr. Charles Gordon, for their work on applying Britest tools to Bioprocessing.

In making their recommendation, the Scientific Advisory Board considered the application of Britest thinking in new domains, looking - as one member put it - for a project that, “tries to attack the most difficult and uncertain problem, and has the most chance of opening up new thinking in a new space."

The first recipients of the Award have taken existing Britest tools and developed and extended their use in gaining process insight and understanding in a range of bioprocesses. The results of their work have great potential not only in developing understanding of bioprocesses, but also to develop better understanding of other manufacturing processes.

Charles Gordon and Jarka Glassey received the John Borland Award from Britest Chairman Brian Murphy in front of over eighty Members’ Day attendees at Bolton’s Macron Stadium, whilst Britest Technical Director Mark Talford (accompanied by John Carroll of CPI) presented Kirsty McLachlan with her award a few days later as she started work in a new role at the CPI-hosted National Biologics Manufacturing Centre.

John Borland, who passed away earlier this year, was a pioneering figure in establishing the Britest tools and approach to process understanding. He was the inspirational driving force behind the collaboration from which the current Britest Limited not-for-profit membership-owned business arose, and a distinguished and successful chemical engineer and senior manager in ICI and Zeneca for over thirty years.