WPI Names Biomanufacturing Center Leader

Kamal Rashid

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By Rick Saia

Worcester Polytechnic Institute has selected a Utah State University professor and internationally recognized leader in biotechnology education, research and workforce development programs to lead WPI’s Biomanufacturing Education and Training Center (BETC), the university announced today.

Kamal A. Rashid joins WPI with more than 30 years of experience in academia and industry, WPI said. Under his leadership, the newly opened BETC, located in Gateway Park, will design and deliver programs that educate and train the multi-layered workforce needed by the growing biomanufacturing industry in the United States and around the world, the school added.

Rashid will also hold research professorships in the departments of chemical engineering, biology and biotechnology, and chemistry and biochemistry.

Rashid has worked at Utah State since 2000 as a research professor and associate director of the university’s Center for Integrated BioSystems. At Utah, he developed the university’s bioprocessing facility to support undergraduate and graduate education and faculty research, and as a contract services provider of training programs and process development for biotechnology companies, read a statement from WPI. From 1984 to 2000, he was on the faculty at Pennsylvania State University, where he studied the impact of environmental pollutants on human health and developed undergraduate biotechnology courses and workforce training programs.

“I am honored and thrilled to be joining the wonderful team at WPI, and to be working in the hub of science, technology and innovation that the Northeast represents,” Rashid said in the statement. “I believe this is the right facility, in the right location, with the right team of people and partners. I see no limits to our success.”