Green and digital continuous-flow pharmaceutical manufacturing

Greening and digitalizing pharmaceutical manufacturing is one of the grand challenges of Europe's pharma-industry. It offers a significant opportunity to boost productivity, improve competitiveness and reduce the industry large environmental footprint. Current progress is impaired by shortage of trained engineers and scientists, who can design green and digital pharmaceutical processes.

This MSCA doctoral network will focus on addressing these skills gaps, delivering a cohort of highly-skilled and trained PhD graduates that will lead the green and digital transformation of the pharmaceutical manufacturing, both in academic and industrial environments. The consortium brings together 7 universities, 1 research center, and additional 11 associated members from academia and industry. This will address urgent topics in continuous green manufacturing and develop greener routes to prepare pharmaceutical products, promoting the adoption of novel technologies (flow synthesis instead batch methods, heterogeneous nano and biocatalysis in lieu of homogeneous catalysts, renewable carbon sources, novel purification methods, digitalization tools) for sustainable manufacturing.

Specific PhD topics for 10 ESRs have been outlined. The research and training programme will equip the ESRs with key scientific and transferable skills, such as IPR, entrepreneurship, data and innovation management. The consortium strong track record in the management of interdisciplinary research and training will ensure effective and timely training of the next-generation leaders of Europe’s pharma-industries. The exposure to academic and industry sectors will also provide the researchers with unparalleled career opportunities.