Creative Education
2012. Vol.3, Supplement, 83-85
Published Online December 2012 in SciRes (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ce) DOI:10.4236/ce.2012.37B021
83
Promotion the Personnel Training in Pharmaceutical Engineering
field by the High Level Student Competition-Prospects on The
First China Student Poster Competition in Pharmaceutical
Engineering
Yanfang Li, Hang Song, Xiaojie Ju, Shun Yao, Kaifeng Du, Bing Liang
School of Chemical Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
[e-mail], [e-mail]
Received 2012
In order to better support the development of higher education of Chinese pharmaceutical engineering and
encourage the career development of young personnel in Chinese pharmaceutical engineering field, ISPE
and Sichuan University jointly organized the first China Student Poster Competition in Pharmaceutical
Engineering at the end of August 2011. The academic competition helps to arouse and foster college
students’ interest and potential, and also attracts enterprises to put forward their technical difficulties and
hot points in manufacture. The excellent professional knowledge and sincere voluntary spirit of ISPE
members ensure the smooth going of this competition, and increase teachers and students’ understanding
for ISPE.
Keywords: Student Competition; Poster; Personnel Training Pharmaceutical Engineering Education
The Training of Pharmaceutical Engineering
Personnel and the Role of the Student Competi-
tion
Since the pharmaceutical engineering major was first set up
in 1998, there have been more than 210 universities that set the
profession for the unde rgraduate education, which becomes the
fastest-growing major in chemical and pharmaceutical category.
However, it is an urgent problem in how to improve the quality
of personnel training, promote the student scientific research
and innovative thinking, and explore new training mode in the
pharmaceutical engineering education.
The academic competition helps to arouse and foster college
students’ interest and potential, competitive awareness, innovative
spirit, practical skill, sense of teamwork, and broaden
knowledge, so academic competition has significant importance
for comprehensively improving the quality of personnel
training. Sichuan University has undertaken the undergraduate
innovative research projects for many years, and proved that
these projects played a positive role for personnel training of
scientific research and innovative thinking. Supported by
Ministry of Education and schools, a few universities also
started to perform various undergraduates’ innovative scientfic
research activities. However, the effectiveness of these
activities is basically evaluated internally by school, and the
lack of mutual communication between universities is mainly
due to the limitation of communication platform.
In the area of pharmacy, pharmaceutical group of the
National Pharmaceutical Experiment Teaching Demonstration
Center organized nationwide Pharmacy / Traditional Chinese
Medicine students experiment competition in 2009. In the
chemical field, there is a biennial national undergraduate
chemistry experiment competition. Both the events achieved
favorable results. In this context, there is an urgent need to have
a nationwide student competition or platform for
pharmaceutical engineering profession to promote the further
development of student research activities. In the chemical field,
there is a biennial national undergraduate chemistry experiment
competition. Both the events achieved beneficial results. In this
context, there is an urgent need to have a nationwide student
competition or platform for pharmaceutical engineering
profession to promote the further development of student
research activities.
The First China Student Poster Competition in
Pharmaceutical Engineering
International society for pharmaceutical engineering (ISPE),
as the world’s largest non-profit organization in pharmaceutical
engineering area, has been committed to the training of tech-
nical experts, and guides the global technology innovation. So
far, ISPE has gathered more than 22,000 professionals from
over 100 countries.
Sichuan University is one of the few institutions in the first
enrollment of pharmaceutical engineering major in 1999. Over
the years, Sichuan University has conducted a series of educa-
tion researches in pharmaceutical engineering personnel train-
ing, the professional curriculum, practical teaching, school-
enterprise cooperation, internationalization and so on, and
gradually forms its “Science and engineering integration, prac-
tice-oriented, innovative training" school characteristics. On the
basis of these achievements, Sichuan University has the oppor-
tunity to participate in the 2010 national pharmaceutical engi-
neering characteristic specialty construction project. Among

Y. F. LI ET AL.
84
domestic colleges, Sichuan University took the lead in estab-
lishing cooperative relations with international pharmaceutical
engineering association, ISPE, and launched a series of ex-
change activities, such as establishing the only ISPE student
chapter in China, undertaking the translation of the ISPE pro-
fessional English vocabulary and the “ISPE raw material drug
production guidance”. Every year, several ISPE senior industry
members give lectures at Sichuan Univerisity. ISPE China of-
fice has provided Sichuan university’ pharmaceutical engineer-
ing students with ISPE technical publications at the value of
$2,000, funded totally five students attended ISPE China An-
nual conferences and arranged visits and practices at Chengdu
Institute of Biological Products, Chengdu Kanghong Sagent
Pharmaceutical, and the Chengdu Rongsheng pharmaceutical
company. Two members of the Current ISPE China Council are
pharmaceutical engineering professors from Sichuan University
and the current chairman of ISPE China Branch of students and
youths is a pharmaceutical engineering teacher and two gradu-
ates of pharmaceutical engineering from the university served
as members in the Branch. The professors and students have
played an important role in the ISPE China Council and the
subsidiary professional committee. Due to the extensive com-
munications, teachers and students achieved a deeper under-
standing about the international pharmaceutical industry and
the regulatory development.
In order to better support the development of higher educa-
tion of Chinese pharmaceutical engineering, to encourage the
career development of young personnel in Chinese pharma-
ceutical engineering field, to widely promote the creative
thinking and research skills of students majoring in pharma-
ceutical engineering, to effectively lead the transformation of
Chinese pharmaceutical engineering education system, to
strengthen the training of the future pharmaceutical engineering
professionals, and to promote the process of internationalization
of Chi nese pharmaceutical industry, ISPE and Sichuan Univer-
sity jointly organized the first China Student Poster Competi-
tion in Pharmaceutical Engineering at the end of August 2011.
There are 42 students (including undergraduates, masters and
doctoral students) from 11 colleges (including Zhejiang Uni-
versity, Tianjin University, Sichuan University, East China
University of Science and Technology, South China University
of Technology, China Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang
Pharmaceutical University, Hefei University of Technology,
Wuhan University of Engineering, Zhengzhou University, and
Taizhou University) enrolled in this competition. The first,
second, third Prize and award of Excellence were de cided by 24
domestic and foreign professors and pharmaceutical industry
experts through the tele-reviewing and video conferenc-
ing review. The first prize winner was funded to participate in
the ISPE global annual conference held in Dallas in November
2011.
Inspiration of the First China Pharmaceutical
Engineering Student Poster Competition
Strengthening of the Mechanism for Training
Engineering Talents
The poster competition is open to all students majoring in the
field of Pharmaceutical Engineering. The contents include: (1)
the application of process analytical techniques in pharmaceut-
ical manufacture; (2) industrial scaling up and optimization for
API manufacture; (3) industrial dosage-form manufacturing
process development; pharmaceutical facility design and opti-
mization; (4) application of QbD in process study; (5) the EHS
(Environment-Health-Safety) in pharmaceutical manufacture;
(6) automation and informationization of pharmaceutical man-
ufacture; (7) studies and applications of the new version GMP
and other regulations in pharmaceutical engineering; (8) drug
logistics. This competition aims at furthering pharmaceutical
and biological engineering students’ learning and application of
“Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering”, “Chemical Engi-
neering Drawing”, “Chemical Engineering Facilities and In-
struments”, and so on. Meanwhile, it attempts to encourage the
students from the fields of Pharmacy Science, Chemical Engi-
neering, Pharmaceutical Engineering, Mechanics of Engineer-
ing and other disciplines to participate. It makes up the shortfall
that there is still no domestic professional competition in Phar-
macy and Chemistry-related fields and offer students one more
opportunity, apart from Chemical Engineering Design Compe-
tition, of practical scientific training, foster students` skills of
learning, practicing, design and academic writing. Besides
keeping freedom of choosing topics, it attracts enterprises to put
forward their technical difficulties and hot points in manufac-
ture as innovative topics, thereby to incubate new academic
growing points.
Promote Deep Industry-Academia Collaboration
With the appreciation of the effect of student competitions by
students and colleges, various competitions flourish. Industry-
Academia collaboration co-sponsored by national industry as-
sociations and colleges and universities’ professional teaching
of the Steering Committee, has become an essential sustainable
fashion for most competitions. It is impossible for pharmaceut-
ical engineering students’ competition to expand influence by
the large scale as a minor discipline. The only solution is to
found a high-level excelsior competition. Suitable engineering
talents can be find by incorporations, the “double-qua l ity”
teacher groups can be promoted and students, colleges and
incorporations both benefit from this competition.
Valuing the Industry-Academia collaboration and gaining
incorporations’ involvement are not only for financial support,
what’s more important is to obtain professional technical sup-
port, improve competition organization by deriving incorpora-
tions’ advanced management system, provide a good platform
for communications between the incorporations, teachers and
students.
Facilitate “Double-Quality” Teaching Forces
The subject of this competition are student, while the direc-
tors are their teachers. For some historical reasons, in most
pharmaceutical engineering discipline of domestic higher
schools, teaching faculty having pharmacy background lacks
related sense of engineering practices, it is requisite to foster
and strength multi-disciplinary compound teaching talents.
Teachers, who direct students to take part in foremost com-
petition, should need to renew and enrich their professional
knowledge, to improve their own practical professional ability,
practical engineering ability. This would hasten the construc-
tion of pharmaceutical engineering discipline mode and its
maturity. Also, the related colleges and universities obtained a
favorable external environment in co-building Engineering

Y. F. LI ET AL.
85
Practical Education Center in pharmaceutical engineering field,
fostering “double-quality ” pharmaceutical engineering profess-
sional teacher groups and training international talents with
better foreign language skills.
Boost Inte r national Collab o r at ion
Pharmaceutical Engineering Student Poster Competition’s
preparations has shown that ISPE’s support for Chinese col-
leges and universities’ development improves from initial aca-
demic and student member enrollment to hosting practical
events collaboratively. During the competition, the excellent
professional knowledge and sincere voluntary spirit of ISPE
members ensure the smooth going of this competition, and
increase teachers and students’ understanding for ISPE. The
collaboration between Academy and industry (internal and
external) was further strengthened by intensive communication
with ISPE members and the recommendation of veteran experts.
More pharmaceutical enterprises could contact and search
pharmaceutical engineering students as reserved talents through
this platform.
Concluding Remarks
Pharmaceutical engineering student competition is an impor-
tant means to foster innovative ability of undergraduate and
postgraduate students, which takes positive ca reer development
of student as the point. High-level Industry-Academia collabo-
ration would profit students, universities and industry. There-
fore, the pharmaceutical engineering student competition would
serve and support the global development of China pharmaceu-
tical industry and the education of foremost engineering talents
in Chinese universities.
Acknowledgment
The paper and relative studies were supported by the project
on the construction of pharmaceutical engineering feature spe-
cialty in Sichuan University which was financed by ministry of
education of China (2010-2012).
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