Committees

BPSA’s member volunteers are the life blood of the Alliance. Active committee participation affords unparalleled networking opportunities and allows participation in overcoming industry obstacles to SUT adoption. The time commitment for the below technical committees is approximately 6-8 one-hour webexes per year.

The catalog of BPSA technical guides and educational webinars demonstrate the strong commitment of BPSA committee volunteers.

Participants must be BPSA members in good standing. To join a committee, log in to your member profile and sign up today.

Technical Committees

The Bio-Process Systems Alliance’s (BPSA) technical committees are guided by its Scientific Advisory Council (SAC), chaired by Kirsten Strahlendorf, Sanofi (Chair) and Jim Vogel, The BioProcess Institute (Vice Chair). The SAC focuses on the technical direction of the Alliance, including oversight on technical projects and initiatives, and crafts responses to technical questions received from outside the Alliance.

Automation Committee

Board Sponsor: Kirsten Strahlendorf, Sanofi
Committee Chair: Hernan Parma, Renolit Healthcare & Stuart Tindal, Sartorius
Committee Objective: Volunteers to this workstream will address the biopharmaceutical industry’s experience with single-use bioprocess automation, including best practices and lessons learned, and explore the needs for the future to bring processes and single-use bioprocess automation to the next level. The Automation Committee’s current active workstreams include automation in the CGT sector and automation and digital technology in the biologics bioprocessing sector. 

Committee members can access the full roster of participants by logging in.

Cell and Gene Therapy (CGT) Committee

Board Sponsor: Ravi Narayanan, Nordson Medical
Committee Chair: Brendan Lucey, Entegris
Committee Objective: Volunteers to this workstream will continue to educate CGT stakeholders on best practices and lessons learned in single-use bioprocessing manufacture. The committee will also complete the fourth in its series of cell and gene therapy technical guides on Advanced Therapy Manufacturing Bottlenecks, 2024 publication date. Existing guides can be found here.

Committee members can access the full roster of participants by logging in.

Continuous Bioprocessing Committee

Committee Co-Chairs: David Chau, Solventum & Davinder Chawla, Sanofi
Committee Objective: Volunteers to this workstream will address the biopharmaceutical industry’s experience to recommend best implementation practices of single-use systems for continuous bioprocessing, develop a gap analysis of single-use systems pertaining to continuous verses batch bioprocessing, present industry challenges on continuous bioprocessing with integration of other novel processing aspects, and application for both continuous and semi-continuous processes.

Committee members can access the full roster of participants by logging in.

Integrity Assurance Committee

Board Sponsor & Committee Chair: Patrick Evrard, Cytiva
Committee Objective: Volunteers to this workstream completed their work on Part II of the BPSA SUS Integrity Technical Guide. Part II.  The guidance document includes practical experiences via case studies, application of control strategies supporting single-use system (SUS) reliability, industry best practices on handling/training, updates, examples of risk assessments, impact on SUS designs, and specific assessments on SUS operating at high pressure will be explored. 

Committee members can access the full roster of participants by logging in.

Sustainability Committee

Board Sponsor: Brian Chung, Syensqo
Committee Chair: Magali Barbaroux, Sartorius
Committee Objective: Volunteers to this workstream provide member stakeholders information on how Single-Use Technologies support BPSA members and biomanufacturing’s sustainability priorities and objectives and addresses industry issues and concerns. The committee regularly shares sustainability tools and trends in the biomanufacturing industry, to share ideas and best practices.

Resources:
Annotated Bibliography of Single-Use Sustainability Articles
BPSA Sustainability Committee Single-Use Technology Glossary

Committee members can access the full roster of participants by logging in.

X-Ray Sterilization Committee

Board Sponsor: Kirsten Strahlendorf, Sanofi
Committee Co-Chairs: Samuel Dorey, Sartorius & James Hathcock, Cytiva
Committee Objective: Volunteers to this workstream are focusing on the future of irradiation sterilization in the form of X-ray, as increasing capacity constraints impact delivery for the rapidly growing demand for sterilization capacity.

Committee members can access the full roster of participants by logging in.

Member Networking Committees

BPSA Membership & Marketing Committee

Board Co-Sponsors: Todd Kapp, Wautoma Biotech, BPSA Vice Chair
Committee Chair: Ralph Daumke, PendoTECH
Committee Objective: Volunteers to this workstream will focus on membership retention and recruitment, as well as marketing BPSA meetings, webinars, and publications, creating BPSA social media strategies, and supporting various BPSA member initiatives.

BPSA Program Committee 

Committee Objective: Volunteers to this workstream will focus on developing BPSA single-use industry educational programs including content and program topics and speaker recommendations for BPSA face-to-face conferences, i.e., the BPSA Summit, webinars, and other BPSA education programs.

Additional BPSA Committees
(no volunteer positions open)

BPSA Industry Data Committee

Board Sponsor: Todd Kapp, Wautoma Biotech
Committee Chair: Patrick Evrard, Cytiva

The industry data committee launched in 2017, as a “pilot program” to demonstrate the joint feasibility of collecting and sharing pertinent industry business data. These initial efforts culminated in the November 2019 release of A Market Data Report 2015-2018.

The data published in 2019 can be requested (with binding non-disclosure agreements) by BPSA-Member organizations in order to assess product quality defects, and evaluate, in real terms, risks associated with the employment of polymer-based bio-process systems for drug manufacture.
As a follow-on to the “2018 Report”, BPSA continued to engage in data collection, and will release its update with a “2021” Report, reflecting (pre-COVID) data, built upon enhanced structure and elements of the 2018 Report.

BPSA Scholarship Committee

The BPSA Board created the Jerry Martin Legacy Scholarship Fund in 2015. Scholarships from the fund to date has awarded scholarships to North Carolina State’s Biomanufacturing Training & Education Center (BTEC), Texas A&M’s National Center for Therapeutics Manufacturing (NCTM) and Worcester Polytechnic’s Biomanufacturing and Education Training Center (BETC). Committee chairs are past BPSA Chairmen Emeriti, Ken Bibbo, John Boehm, Jerry Martin and Rick Sullivan.

Technical Committees

Automation Committee
Cell and Gene Therapy (CGT) Committee
Continuous Bioprocessing Committee
Integrity Assurance Committee
Sustainability Committee
X-Ray Committee

Member Networking Committees

BPSA Membership & Marketing Committee
BPSA Program Committee

Additional Committees

BPSA Industry Data Committee
BPSA Scholarship Committee