Pharmaceutical Engineering (M.Sc.)

Pharmaceutical Engineering is a specialization within the intersection of Process Engineering and Life Sciences. The use of these engineers is focused on the industrial healthcare sector, particularly the pharmaceutical industry. Why? Drug substances are very special products. Their ingredients, called active ingredients, interact selectively with parts of the human body. Therefore, these active ingredients must have special quality characteristics in terms of content, purity and overall application. And this begins with the raw material and its first processing stage and continues through special dosage forms to the packaged product, which reaches patients and consumers via pharmacies.

The Master's degree program in Pharmaceutical Engineering deepens the mathematical, scientific and technical knowledge from the Bachelor's degree program. A manageable number of compulsory and elective modules are offered for this purpose. As in the Bachelor's program, the content is very much geared towards the current requirements of the modern pharmaceutical industry. In addition to the university's instructors, guest lecturers give lectures on topics from their areas of work and invite students on excursions to their companies. As part of projects and labs, students are increasingly required to carry out their own literature research, project planning, execution of investigations, evaluation and presentation in the form of written reports and oral presentations. The project work can be carried out either at the university or in industry during the current semester or during the lecture-free period, thus establishing contact with industry at an early stage. For the Master's thesis, topics are offered in the research groups at the university as well as internships in industry.

Graduates of the Master's degree program in Pharmaceutical Engineering are qualified for all departments in a pharmaceutical company: Production and packaging, galenic development, project management, control department, quality management (validation and qualification) and technology. Larger pharmaceutical companies have independent research departments. The professional activity often begins with a trainee program to familiarize the newcomers with the operational processes. After the induction period, they are increasingly assigned independent tasks and projects. Typical positions of responsibility include project manager, group leader, production assistant and research & development assistant. In all cases, the basic mathematical, scientific and technical training received during their studies provides the ideal prerequisites for mastering the wide range of tasks in the pharmaceutical industry.