6 July 2015, Delft – On the 30th of June, the finals of the yearly LST MSc Design competition took place at Intravacc in Bilthoven. Each year the student teams tackle a realistic business problem/opportunity. This year 5 student teams from TU Delft competed to solve the Intravacc business case. The competition was organized in cooperation with Intravacc, TU Delft and BE-Basic Foundation. The winning team (Maria Pereira Goncalves, Louis Christiaan Kuijpers, Maaike Voskamp, Lenno van den Berg and Casper de Bruijn) presented a complete process and business design producing a MenB vaccine by proposing optimizations of the current Intravacc process leading to lower production costs taking into account market dynamics and product potential. The jury especially complimented the team on their three-phase strategy : optimize the process to shorten time to market (direct sale and license the technology) and (re)invest to further innovate and optimize the process in a second stage and even aim for a fully synthetic vaccine at the third stage. The team had given detailed recommendations. They were awarded with a prize of €400.

Chairman of the jury Luuk van der Wielen (BE-Basic | TU Delft) is content about the results: ‘The winning team was able to creatively link investment concepts around the design, production and implementation of the vaccine, while keeping it respectively cost affordable and profitable. All other teams had very interesting and innovative concepts as well – I am proud of all of them.’ 

Other jury members were Dr.ir. Ahd Hamidi (senior project leader vaccine processes, Intravacc), Prof. dr Fred Hagen (Educational director LST Program, TU Delft), ir. Bram Ledeboer (NBI Investors), Michiel Stork (head process development group for bacterial vaccines,  Intravacc) and Jan Hendriks (global health alliance manager, Intravacc). During the meeting, scientific director Jelle Thole also gave a corporate presentation about Intravacc emphasizing the importance of cooperation with academia such as this competition. 

The LST MSc Design competition is set up to develop the technical and economical design skills of the students as well as to develop creativity and innovation in finding solutions and last but certainly not least: work together in teams.