Employ Florida Banner Centers

The Employ Florida Banner Center for Biotechnology aims to ensure Florida’s booming biotechnology industry has the highly skilled workforce it needs to continue to grow. Established with a $500,000 grant from Workforce Florida, Inc., the center, led by the University of Florida, is based in Alachua.

The center is creating new courses to train current biotech workers who need to upgrade their skills and prepare people interested in careers in the industry for new, in-demand jobs. The University of Florida’s Center of Excellence for Regenerative Health Biotechnology and the Center for Precollegiate Education and Training have joined in this initiative with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida Community College at Jacksonville, Indian River Community College in Fort Pierce, the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering and Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville. The Employ Florida Banner Center is housed within the University of Florida’s Center of Excellence, which includes a new $10 million drug manufacturing facility, Florida Biologix™.

Florida has long been home to a thriving biotechnology industry that is now expected to grow considerably once anticipated spin-offs and other businesses cluster around the new, big bioscience research institutes—the Scripps Research Institute, Burnham Institute for Medical Research, Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies and SRI International. Bioscience businesses are seeking personnel ranging from laboratory technicians, who can help conduct experiments and manufacture drugs and devices, to professional, administrative, regulatory and other support staff. The Employ Florida Banner Center for Biotechnology focuses its efforts on entry-level and advanced employees working in biomanufacturing technology, the commercialization of new drugs and medical devices, and agritechnology.

The Employ Florida Banner Center for Biotechnology soon will become the new home for Web-based biotech curricula created in 2005—through a $1.2 million grant from Workforce Florida—that focuses on laboratory technology, biomanufacturing and regulatory affairs. In its first year, the center is developing new training that builds on the existing online biotech curricula that can be used to introduce new workers to the field or refresh the skills of those currently working in the industry. One of the new courses, for example, teaches participants about working in wet-lab environments. The Employ Florida Banner Center also will complete a needs assessment outlining projected demand for new workers in the state’s biotech industry. Through the University of Florida and its partners, the center will provide entry-level or refresher training to at least 65 people by June 30, 2007, with plans to expand its outreach and offerings beginning in its second year.

Industry representation on the Advisory Council includes executives from BioFlorida, Medtronic, Nabi Pharmaceuticals, Regeneration Technologies and Scripps Florida.

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