When did you graduate, and what was your major? What about your minor? 

I graduated with a major in Bioengineering in 2018, with a personalized minor focused on bioprocess engineering. My interest in industrial biotechnology and bioprocesses began already during my bachelor’s studies, when Bioner organized an excursion to AB Enzymes (then known as Roal), a company producing industrial enzymes. That’s when the idea started to form that fermentation and bioprocesses might be my future direction. I tried to select as many courses as possible that supported this interest, even though at the time there weren’t any courses specifically focused on bioprocess engineering. By also making use of course offerings from my exchange university, I was eventually able to put together a personalized minor in the subject.

Outside of the core technical studies in biotechnology and processes, I especially remember the Multicultural Communication courses. I’ve never been particularly gifted with languages, and speaking English used to cause me a fair amount of stress. These courses helped me get over that anxiety: there was no common language other than English, and nobody spoke it perfectly anyway. Yet we still understood each other! It’s valuable to understand how different backgrounds influence our ways of communicating and what we expect from one another in that regard. In my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work a lot with international clients and colleagues, and I feel those courses helped me a great deal. Lessons from project management and statistics courses have also proven useful in real working life. 

Did you work during your studies? 

I was lucky to get a summer job already during my bachelor’s studies as a process engineering trainee at Genencor International Oy in Jämsänkoski. I got the chance to learn how an engineering team operates at an industrial enzyme factory and to see the entire production process on an industrial scale. This experience further reinforced my thoughts about pursuing a future career in bioprocessing. 

What was your first job after graduation? 

After graduating, I continued working as a researcher at VTT, where I also completed my master’s thesis. I worked in both the plant biotechnology and bioprocess engineering teams on various research and customer projects. I didn’t have any plans for postgraduate studies, even though I ended up as a researcher, which is actually quite common at VTT.

VTT is an amazing organization full of brilliant and inspiring people from whom you can learn something about almost anything. It’s an absolutely fantastic place to start your career! My work focused heavily on cellular agriculture, and during my years at VTT, I had the chance to be involved in projects such as producing cell-based coffee, fungal leather, and milk and egg proteins using various microbial platforms. I took part in internal marketing videos, contributed to writing scientific articles, and joined sensory panels evaluating food innovations. At other times, I’d pull on coveralls and rubber boots to carry out pilot-scale fermentations and post-processing for international customer projects. On some days, I worked with the team to implement new technology involving a bioreactor robot.

VTT was a workplace full of opportunities, where I was able to learn from top professionals and steer my career in a direction that truly interested me. I especially enjoyed the challenging customer projects, despite or maybe because of the high pressure. It was incredibly rewarding to understand customers’ needs in their development projects and help bring those to life. That experience taught me a lot about managing expectations: after all, the work was research and development, meaning success was never guaranteed. But with good planning, communication, and careful execution, getting positive feedback from a satisfied customer was extremely rewarding.

Where do you work now?

My current employer is Onego Bio, a VTT spin-off company that produces the main protein in egg white, ovalbumin, using the filamentous fungus Trichoderma reesei. At Onego, I work as the Head of Bioprocessing, leading the company’s bioprocess team of ten people. Our team is responsible for the development and industrial-scale upscaling of fermentation and post-processing.

How did you end up in your current job?

I ended up at Onego through a traditional open job posting. The company had just started its operations at the time and was looking for someone to develop the bioprocessing side. Since Onego Bio’s technology had previously been developed at VTT and I had been involved in that project, I was already familiar with the technology and their needs, which led to me being selected for the role.

Can you describe a typical workday?

My workdays at Onego vary greatly. In a startup company, every day is different, and everyone takes part in handling whatever tasks are on the table, no matter what they are. For us, that initially meant things like assembling office desks and designing and building laboratory spaces. We had to figure out how to build the infrastructure for utilities required by bioreactors, such as steam and compressed air.

These days, I mostly work on the office side, making sure that my team in the bioprocess lab is up to date on our current priorities and has the necessary information and resources to carry out ongoing fermentations and experiments. My calendar is filled with both internal and external meetings. The topics range from HR and safety issues to analyzing our own fermentations, discussing test plans and results with external development partners, and planning our future commercial-scale production facility.

I keep track of many moving parts and actively communicate with both my own team and other team leaders to ensure we are allocating our resources correctly to meet our current goals. My role is essentially to provide others with the best possible conditions to succeed in their work, ensure we stay focused on what really matters and achieve our targets within a sufficient timeframe and also to report on all this to the company’s leaders.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

I feel that I’m working on something truly meaningful. The bigger picture of cellular agriculture as a future method of food production motivates me every day in my work. When it comes to bioprocessing and fermentation, I love the element of unpredictability. No two bioreactor runs are ever the same, and success requires careful consideration of many factors and moving parts. Even with well-planned processes, nature and biology can still throw curveballs, so you always have to stay alert!

At Onego Bio, I have the honor of working with the best colleagues and international professionals in the field. We’re all working toward a shared goal and help each other move closer to that goal every single day.

What advice would you give to students in this field?

Choose courses that genuinely interest you and don’t be afraid to follow your own path. Just remember that you’ll be building your subject-matter expertise throughout your entire career, so it’s completely okay if you don’t know everything right after graduation. Skills gained at university that are more important than technical knowledge are the ability to learn, seek out information, and to work with and relate to different kinds of people.

For me, guild and club activities provided at least as many valuable lessons and professional contacts as my actual coursework did, so don’t underestimate their value! The field of biotechnology is on the rise, and there is a growing demand both in Finland and globally for future professionals in bioprocess engineering. I hope to see you, the future top talents of our field, out there in the future!