Muhammad Safwan Akram is working at National Horizons Centre and School of Health and Life Sciences as a Professor of Biomanufacturing, Engineering Biology and Innovation in Biosciences. He has previously worked as Associate Professor of Biological & Process Engineering in SHLS. Prior to that he has worked as an Assistant Professor at University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. Safwan obtained his PhD in Analytical
Biotechnology from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge where he also did his post-doc developing low cost diagnostics. Prior to that he completed his M.Phil
in Bioscience Enterprise under the auspices of Cambridge/MIT Partnership. His work has been published in reputed journals like Nature Biotechnology, Lab on a Chip & Annual Reviews of Analytical Chemistry. He has been awarded Medimmune Award and CambridgeSens Innovative Idea award for research excellence. He provides consultancy to venture capital funds, biotech and pharma companies. During his academic career, he has taught courses on Protein design and engineering, Recombinant DNA Technology and Stem Cells, Biosensors, Technology Enterprise and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. Safwan was voted by the students to win university wide Star award for most outstanding teaching.

• Biomanufacturing of nanobodies, monoclonal antibodies and AAV for gene therapy applications
• Synthetic biology of valuable compounds
• Low cost diagnostics for various biotechnology applications
• Biomimetics for sensors and fermentation applications
• Bioactive scaffolds for Tissue Engineering
• Exploring relationship between Inclusion Bodies (IBs) and cell viability through genomic and proteomic tools
• Paper based diagnostics to determine drug quality
• Polymorphism in amyloid proteins
• Start up valuations of Biotech businesses 

Safwan’s lab is looking for PhD students for the above-mentioned projects. If interested e-mail him directly.

Safwan’s laboratory has won substantial funding over the last 9 years that includes

As Principal Investigator

• Defence & Security Accelerator Award, in collaboration with Selective Antibodies & Smith LLP. (£300,000) (2025)
• BBSRC Landscape Award, Yorkshire Biosciences Doctoral Training Programme (YBDTP) University lead (10 PhD studentships for Teesside University) (£1,500,000)(2024 – 2030)
• BBSRC Landscape Award, North East England Doctoral Landcsape Awards  (NEEDL) University lead (10 PhD studentships for Teesside University) (£1,500,000)(2024 – 2030)
• Launchpad NetZero CR&D grant in collaboration with Hexis Labs (£497,000) (2023 – 2025)
• Accelerated Knowledge Transfer to Innovate (AKT2I) with Hart Biologicals Pvt. Ltd.(£30,479) (2022-2023)
• Two direct studentships from Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, Centre from Process Innovation and Hart Biologicals (£160,000) (2023-2027)
• One studentship from IBIOIC (BBSRC CTP programme)with Hexis Labs (£140,000) (2021-2024)
• Advance Biologics Manufacturing Training – for a leading biopharma manufacturer of the value (£260,000) (2020-2021)
• Inclusion Bodies for Industrial Biotechnology – (£100,000) from Research England’s Funding through THYME as a leading PI, in collaboration with FDB and University of York, (£20,000) additional funding from FDB (2019-2022)
• ERDF PhD studentship in collaboration with Hart Innovations (£117,000) (2018-2023)
• Innovate UK grant for (£130,000) as a PI for “Downstream processing of monoclonal antibodies” in collaboration with GlycoSelect UK Ltd (2017-2018)
• Won a Graduate Tutorship i.e. Phd studentship (fees + salary) ~ £85,000 (2017)
• Won two research grants for consumables from Teesside University’s Research Fund amounting £6,000 (2015)
• CambridgeSens Award of £5000 for creating a novel biological solar cell (2009)

As Co-Investigator

• RESILIENCE: Medicines Manufacturing Skills Centre of Excellence (£4,200,000) (2024) Co-I with Prof. Vikki Rand, Prof. Gary Montague & Mr. Connor Foster
• One studentship from IBIOIC (BBSRC CTP programme) with FDBK and University of York (£140,000) (2021-2024)
• Advanced Therapies Skills Training Network (ATSTN) Grant as co-PI with Prof. Gary Montague and Dr. Jen Vanderhoven (£1,000,000) (2021-2022)
• Virtual Center of Advance Therapies Skills Programme (vCATTS) – Development of bioprocessing videos for hands on training (£60,000) as lead for the chromatography strand (2020-2021)
• Innovate UK grant as a co-applicant for (£180,000) in collaboration with Quorn foods. (2018)
• Won an internal collaborative bid for equipment amounting £57,000 to buy NMR (2015)

Prof. Dr. M. Safwan Akram has been involved with a start-up “YourBug” and a pharma company named “Renacon Pharma”. He is always on a look out for projects worth commercialising and making a difference to society. He sits on the scientific advisory board of Hexis Laboratories, UK and GlycoSelect Ltd., Ireland.