Harris Manchester’s Fellow and Tutor in Engineering, Professor Harrison Steel, has won the prestigious University of Oxford's Early Career Commercial Impact Award. It acknowledges his pioneering work in creating an open-source bioreactor technology and supporting widespread innovation in biotechnology. Harrison was the recipient of the Philip Leverhulme Prize last year, in which he was awarded £100,000 for work on engineering new biotechnologies. The Principal and Fellows are delighted to congratulate Harrison on his achievement.
Over the past four years, Professor Harrison Steel has advanced the capabilities of researchers in academia and start-up companies by creating the Chi.Bio Bioreactor platform. This automated robotic system provides unique capabilities for biotechnological research and development and has achieved broad impact via dissemination as an open-source technology, at a cost of less than 5% of commercial bioreactors tools.
Chi.Bio has been adopted by researchers around the world and is particularly benefiting early-stage companies, academics, and researchers in developing countries, with more limited access to high-end equipment. Harrison’s platform has opened up engineering and scientific opportunities in many domains, including in the study of antibiotic resistance evolution, engineering organisms for carbon sequestration, and the development of artificial meat products.
Professor Ronald Roy says, “Professor Harrison Steel is one of the Department’s best and brightest young academics. His automated Chi.Bio bioreactor platform is enables and accelerates low-cost biotech research at unprecedented scales. This unique capability currently underpins engineering and biology research globally and is particularly significant to work in under-resourced areas, where cost is a limiting factor. We are very pleased to see this work recognized by the Division.”*
Press release from The Department of Engineering Science.
