MY PERSONAL VIEWS OF FERMENTATION WORKSHOPS

It seems nowadays, there are various universities and colleges offering 'fermentation workshops' for all kinds of individuals ranging from students to even researchers and scientists. I have been following the sylabbus for all these fermentation workshops offered by the various universities and colleges and I have my doubts to the real objectives of the workshops as to whether the participants really gained anything significant from these workshops or is it just another ' paid holidays' for the attendees

The common things that I have observed in these fermentation workshops is that they have various types of fermentors being offered or presented, and that the participants will only learn what the basic lessons offered by the manual, or how to operate the fermentors as according to the operating manuals

In most of these workshops either the participants are too few and from a diverse background and/or the time allocated to learn to operate the fermentor is indeed to short so as to really obtain significant gain from the courses. As far as I can see these courses are just for peopple who are curious how fermentors look and how they are operated!

These workshops have never really go in depth in the theory of the fermentors, nor the finer side of exploiting the fermentors for research. They do not teach you how to design a good fermentation experiment or how to optimize the conditions or how to trouble shoot the process. Such course would be a full time courses requiring in depth understanding of the fermentor and fermentation process from both the engineering and microbiological point of view

The organizers of such fermentation workshops must make real efforts to improve the courses to the public not showing bits and pieces of the fermentor