Both programs will start in 2014-15 academic year as master's degree and postgraduate courses of the UB´s
Faculty of Biology. The courses will be addressed to graduate and postgraduate students in life sciences and related disciplines and qualified professionals working in the healthcare and biotech fields.
With the addition of these two courses to the training portfolio offered by the Faculty of Biology, the University of Barcelona aims to strengthen its capabilities in the field of training and promotion of entrepreneurship and innovative thinking among university students, encouraging them to accept, as main actors, the challenge of these changes.
Dr Joaquim Gutiérrez Fruitós, dean of the Faculty of Biology of UB and director of these courses, affirms: “These two programs are intended as an educational reference and a tool for the empowerment of talent and entrepreneurship”. “This is a pioneering initiative —he adds—, in the university environment, which strengthens the innovative training model of the University of Barcelona, as it complements the training in life sciences with a business vision, while promoting the incorporation of new positions in the industry and collaborating in the promotion of innovation and modernization of the productive system”.
Founded in 2013, Biotech Development is a company specialized in the provision of consulting services for knowledge transfer and development of postgraduate academic programs. Through its strategic Business School, it will undertake the management, organization and coordination of the master's and postgraduate course, and will also provide the necessary academic program and human resources.
Juan García Soria, creator and CEO of Biotech Development, states that “the leitmotiv for the creation of Biotech Development was to contribute to the value chain of the development process of new drugs by investing in its most valuable asset, the human capital”. The main objective of the creation of these two training programs is “to enhance mixed career profiles in science and business by enabling professionals to apply their knowledge in life sciences from a management perspective and to provide them with the capacity to transform research projects into business realities”, concludes García Soria.
The master's and postgraduate courses will be conducted in collaboration with ESEI International Business School, an educational institution with over 20 year experience in customized and comprehensive training of young professionals in an international environment. “Since its creation, ESEI has always been committed to the need for the collaboration between the university and the industry and, therefore, participates in the initiative undertaken by Biotech Development and the University of Barcelona, which has resulted in the creation of these two programs for the training of new professional profiles aimed at the biopharmaceutical sector, which bring the social, economic and business reality closer to this specific area of knowledge”, says Jordi Estera, director of ESEI.
