At high school, Jesper spent a week at Novozymes’ laboratories studying enzymes as part of a project. And now he’s back, having trained as a chemical engineer, working as a chemist at the factory at Nørrebro in Copenhagen. Here, his job is to optimize fermentation in order to get better and better yields. This might mean tweaking with the ingredients that keep the fermentation process going, or changing the temperature along the way.
“It’s up to me to have the idea, assess its potential, and then bring it to life,” he explains. “I look at the historical data and try to find connections between the many parameters that we can control and the yield at the very end. If I have a particularly wacky idea, I test it on a small scale first, but otherwise I’ll try it out on a full scale straight away.”
As the chemical processes involved in fermentation are incredibly complex and far from easy to predict, it is always exciting to see what the results will be. And this blend of theory and practice each day is music to Jesper’s ears.
“My job gives me the academic freedom to develop ideas. But it’s also closely linked to production itself, so it’s also very hands-on and I get instant feedback. Did it make production more efficient or not?”
Elbow room
While the production of pharmaceuticals is subject to incredibly strict quality and safety requirements, there is more elbow room when producing technical enzymes for industrial use.
“This means that there’s a completely different flow – things move faster here at Novozymes than in the pharmaceutical business,” Jesper explains. “For instance, a new pharmaceutical product will typically take 10–12 years to develop and prepare for sale, whereas we can get a new enzyme out in just 2–3 years. You get to see the results within just a few years, and that really spurs me on – it’s great to see results.”
And the way that these results go beyond the four walls of the factory is also important for Jesper:
“I’m really proud to work for Novozymes and of the way that we use microbiology to create a cleaner and better world. In my job, the environmental aspect is also very concrete – every time we manage to produce more using less, it impacts directly on Novozymes’ environmental bottom line.”