Under the limited direction of the Institute Director, the Director, Technical Operations is accountable for all technical operations including laboratory infrastructure, safety, and oversight of a team of individuals. In the future, this team may be working three shifts with 365 day per year operations at the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL). The work involves tactical decision-making to support safe and effective laboratory operations.
NIIMBL is a large-scale effort dedicated to supporting the manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals, and it is established by a cooperative agreement with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as a public/private consortium of a diverse set of member organizations, including industry, academia, non-profit organizations, state governments, and federal agencies. NIIMBL is a member of the Manufacturing USA network of institutes funded by the federal government to advance United States competitiveness in advanced manufacturing innovation. Institutionally at the University of Delaware, NIIMBL reports to the Vice President for Research, Scholarship & Innovation.
The most high-profile activities that NIIMBL does are the execution of technical projects to advance the readiness levels of relevant technologies, assays, and methods. These projects include scopes of scientific work that generally include many organizations as partners and collaborators. For example, a project may involve experimental studies, at a level consistent with best practices found in the biopharmaceutical industry, and include scientists from several large and small companies, a scientist from a Federal agency, and a scientist from a University. Many of these projects will be hosted at the University of Delaware in a state-of-the-art laboratory facility purpose-built for such studies. These projects will involve a diverse set of technologies and approaches and address drug substance, drug product, and analytical needs by the industry appropriate to several types of biopharmaceuticals: vaccines, therapeutic proteins and antibodies, bispecific antibodies, and gene therapy vectors, among others. To accelerate innovation and support standards development, the Tech Ops team hosts and performs NIIMBL technical work that is best done at HQ because the work requires a collaborative environment and is work most effectively performed at a neutral site; this is a full-time, in person, position.