Professor Gary Montague holds the Centre for Process Innovation Chair in Bioprocessing at Teesside University.He led the Biopharmaceutical and Bioprocessing Technology Centre at Newcastle University where he was Professor of Bioprocess Control. He is a chemical engineer with specialist knowledge is biosystems engineering and has considerable experience in working at the academic / industry interface both from a research and training perspective. He has been involved in research supervision and delivering training for the EPSRC Engineering Doctoral Centre in Biopharmaceutical Process Development at Newcastle University for the last five years.

His research activities align well with the ethos of Quality by Design and these are being taken forward in collaboration with colleagues in the National Horizons Centre in Darlington.

His key areas of research expertise are:

Big Data: The analysis of data from multiple sources to extract maximum information.

Systems Modelling: Development of mechanistic and linear and non-linear data-based models.

Biosystems analysis, control and optimisation: The use of methods to gain enhanced process understanding and from that designing systems for improved operation.

Decision making with limited information: Methods to progress products through development in a timely and cost effective manner.

Applications of Systems Techniques: Experience in the process and bioprocess industries, food processing sector, Home and Personal Care products.

The Engineering Doctorate is just one of several industrially focused training activities that he has been involved in ranging from Continuing Professional Development, through modular training to full industrially orientated masters awards.

In his research he has been involved in a broad range of projects, with notable recent activities being the F3 Factory EU programme and a TSB funded project led by GSK which was awarded IChemE Project of the Year and the Outstanding Achievement in Chemical Engineering Award in 2012.

In short …

The development and application of systems techniques to make a practical difference to the process and bioprocess industrial sectors.

The underlying background…

His research falls within the area of Systems Engineering and the application of Systems Techniques for process and bioprocess improvement. The predominant application areas considered are chemical, biochemical and food processes. From a fundamental research perspective an early career contribution was to develop artificial neural networks (ANN) for use in the process sector. ANN’s are a non-linear data-based modelling approach that have generic applicability. An early paper on the topic won the ICI prize for Best Applications Paper in 2000. Several research grants followed including involvement in the DTI Funded Neural Network Technology Transfer programme with EDS. Through this Club, ANN technology was taken through to industrial case study demonstration. ANN’s are just one approach for capturing complex process dynamics. He has also championed the use of hybrid techniques, where multiple structures of models are combined to give a more robust prediction. Human knowledge is also a vital source of information. Trained by CK Design in the Knowledge Acquisition Technique (KAT), he used the method to develop many different process monitoring and control systems, as well as investigating its utility in other sectors. An example of its use was when it enabled the combination of the knowledge of ten process engineers and operators into a real-time knowledge based system and implemented it for the monitoring and control of large scale fermentation plant.

His research interests predominantly fell within the development and use of techniques to extract information from large data sets and/or people but the application to industry faced a number of challenges. The launch of Quality by Design and acceptance of Process Analytical Technology by the US Food and Drug Administration provided a massive boost for his research interaction with industry. This introduced the acceptance of sophisticated instrumentation that resulted in high dimensional data that required the application of data mining techniques to extract information related to key process quality attributes. Since then he has researched into the the development and use of data based pattern extraction methods for use in monitoring, control and optimisation. Research has not just considered the algorithmic aspects, but how the algorithms can be applied robustly in an industrial environment. In addition to pharmaceutical applications, he has looked at deployment in food processing, fine chemical manufacture and home and personal care products. Each of these sectors has brought specific challenges that impact on the algorithmic procedures employed.