Digital Science & Innovation Day: Brussels

Welcome

Meritxell Orpinell, Leader, Professional Services - EMEA, Benchling

Digital Transformation to Unlock the Power of Biotechnology

Robert Burke, General Manager EMEA, Benchling

Data Driven Decision Making

Daan van der Neut, Manager, Analytical Support, UniQure

Data is a simple word and we often think simplistically about what it means. However, with a lot of data things become complicated very quickly. Questions such as what can be extracted from data, accessibility, and scalability are daily topics in our field of work.

Attend this session to hear Daan presenting about data-driven decision-making.

Ever since Daan started working in a lab (in the late 90s), how to record experiments has been a challenge.

In the last 10 years, with the introduction of electronic LIMS systems and ELNs, a foundation has been put into place to help with this issue.
While it is a first step in digitizing the data, there is still something missing: Structuring data in those Laboratory records, in other words making it readable for software, is the next big step in this digitizing evolution.

To do this, one needs to map out processes from research through development, create the needed tables/schemas, add relationships, and decide what should be captured.

This way databases that can be queried for information, enabling one to see patterns, complex relationships, monitor key process steps, and define goals are created.

Structuring the captured data is opening new options: it can drive decisions, such as infrastructural changes in a lab, resources and raw data monitoring, and better scientific insights for research and development.

The way data are structured and recorded is key to what will be done with them, and what benefits can be extracted in the future, like predictive modeling, automated ordering materials, and many more.

Can digital transformation drive sustainability in the lab environment? How can we use existing resources more efficiently?

Fireside chat with Liesbeth Mertens, Lab Coordinator for Neuroscience R&D at Janssen Pharmaceutica (& Resource Hub BD Lead for JLabs) and Tobias Wingbermühle, Co-founder and CCO at Clustermarket

‍

Reviving a mammoth protein to change the future of plant-based food

Elsa Lauwers, Chief Scientific Officer, Paleo

With an expanding global population, a wide adoption of plant-based proteins and a reduced consumption of conventional animal products is urgently required to protect the environment, animal well-being and human health. Yet for many consumers the taste and nutritional value of plant-based meat and fish alternatives are still not convincing. Paleo is a Belgian start-up that researches and develops new functional ingredients to make these products tastier and healthier.

Attend this session to hear how Paleo uses precision fermentation, a combination of careful genetic engineering with the age-old fermentation process, to let yeast cells produce large amounts of meat or fish proteins that are 100% animal free.
Hear how Benchling supported Paleo in their journey to turn a scalable technology, which has revolutionised medicine in the 1980s by providing diabetics with human insulin, into a game-changer for the meat and fish industry. The company is now able to offer a much wider choice of nature-inspired food ingredients, including a million-year old mammoth protein. Eating a protein from an extinct species is the ultimate proof that we can still have the meat or fish experience that is part of human culture for millennia, without animals and the environment having to pay for it.

Customer Panel

Join this interactive panel session to hear firsthand from Paleo and UniQure on how they’re progressing their R&D digital transformation journeys. Specifically, they will share learnings to date and their future vision and direction for a central source of R&D truth.

Daan van der Neut, Manager, Analytical Support, UniQure
Elsa Lauwers, CSO, Paleo
Moderated by Meritxell Orpinell, Leader, Professional Services, Benchling

‍