Welcome to the Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing’s (CBB’s) website. The Center, funded by the state of Iowa, builds on a tradition of fruitful interactions between faculty, students, other institutions, industry, and government. Success of the CBB is attributable to this cooperation and collaboration. Founded in 1983 as the Biocatalysis Research Group, it was the first – and continues to be one of the strongest – clusters of scientists in the United States dedicated to the unique area of biocatalysis. Strengths of our program are underlined by the more than $15 million annual research support that the faculty receives from extramural awards and training grant support for more than 20 predoctoral fellows, and the involvement of more than 50 faculty members and their research groups from ten departments.

We are excited by the excellent support the CBB receives from the state of Iowa, our central administration, and the numerous programs that have been spawned through the CBB. Our state-of-the-art pilot-scale fermentation and bioprocessing laboratory is unsurpassed. The CBB laboratory brings together the University of Iowa core fermentation facility, laboratory space for conducting industry/university related research and a first-rate facility. More than 500 funded projects from academia, industry, and federal agencies have been conducted at the CBB laboratory since 1996.

This website provides a glimpse at the CBB, including participating faculty scientists, their departments, academic programs, the contract fermentation and bioprocessing laboratory, and areas of research. CBB has also added a GMP facility for downstream processing of biotherapeutics. A GMP fermentation facility with three fermentors, 30, 100 and 300 liters was completed in 2007 and started contract work in mid 2007. We encourage you to peruse the website, whether your interests are confidential contract research or academic. Feel free to contact us, or a faculty member whose research may be of interest to you, and consider coming to Iowa City to attend our annual conferences. We hope that this website reflects the enthusiasm of the Biocats, as well as our superlative facilities and significant talents.