Hans-Peter Meyer, SATW | Scientific Advisory Board

Which talents will shape tomorrow?

Which competencies are essential for Switzerland's long-term prosperity? “Forecasts are difficult, especially when they concern the future,” as Karl Valentin famously noted. This reminder is particularly apt when considering the major global challenges of the coming decade. Geopolitical fragmentation, pandemics, resource scarcity, technological and AI-related risks feature prominently in many outlooks. Yet climate change and environmental degradation are consistently identified as the most far-reaching and impactful risks. The challenge is therefore unmistakable: Switzerland needs talent capable of driving the transition to sustainable manufacturing and a circular economy.

White and red biotechnology

Relative to its size and population, Switzerland ranks among the global leaders in biologics, immunology, and personalized medicine — fields collectively referred to as red biotechnology (see Table 1). Its industrial and academic ecosystem in this domain is exceptionally strong, and demand for highly skilled talent is expected to remain robust. However, the global transition toward a circular economy calls for talent and expertise that extend beyond red biotechnology. In particular, white (industrial) biotechnology will play a critical role in enabling resource-efficient processes, sustainable manufacturing, and environmentally responsible value chains across multiple industries.

Future needs

While Switzerland is well positioned to deliver sustainable solutions to global challenges, its domestic biotechnology needs can be narrowed to four key application areas:

• Small-molecule pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals. Despite more than 80 years of industrial biotechnology, traditional chemical synthesis still suffers from high E-factors (the environmental factor or E-factor in green chemistry is the total mass of waste divided by the total mass of product). This underscores the need to further adopt regio- and enantioselective biocatalysis and advanced biomanufacturing to improve efficiency, sustainability, and competitiveness.
• Food and feed. Fermentation, the oldest biotechnological application, already contributes roughly 30% of daily food consumption. However, shrinking arable land and climate change necessitate new biotechnological approaches to produce high-value proteins, fats, and other food ingredients. Cellular agriculture, enabling the production of meat, fats, chocolate, coffee, and related products, is emerging as a key solution.
• Flavor and fragrance. The flavor and fragrance industry is increasingly shifting towards biotechnological routes for complex molecules, as traditional sourcing from plant and animal metabolites becomes more constrained, costly, and environmentally challenging.
• Cosmetics and personal care. To remain competitive, manufacturers must rely on natural or nature-identical ingredients while prioritizing green sourcing, sustainable supply chains, and environmentally benign chemistry.

Biotechnology enables the use of microorganisms across a wide range of industries. Through billions of years of evolution, microorganisms can survive and thrive in environments ranging from deep-sea hydrothermal vents to high-altitude mountainous regions. Their metabolic capabilities are extraordinarily diverse, encompassing countless molecules and biochemical reactions.

The specificity and precision of biological catalysts (enzymes) are unmatched by chemical catalysts. Biological catalysts are also self-replicating, and the exponential growth of microbial cells enables very high space-time yields. Bioprocesses are inherently safe, operating at low temperatures and mild pH values while relying on biocompatible raw materials.

The essential characteristics of microorganisms can be harnessed as a central tool of biotechnology: the bioreactor (also known as a fermentor). This sophisticated system allows microorganisms to grow and produce target compounds under tightly controlled conditions. Products that are ideally manufactured in bioreactors span major industrial sectors.

White and red biotechnology

Cross-industry innovation occurs when ideas, technologies, or practices from one field inspire transformative advances in another. A major opportunity lies in the strong potential for cross innovation between markets and application areas. Many biotechnology concepts perceived as novel in one sector have long been established in others. For example, the food industry increasingly relies on controlled microbial processes under the label of “precision fermentation”, even though these technologies have been developed, refined, and industrially deployed in the pharmaceutical sector for more than 80 years. A similar dynamic applies to cellular agriculture, which aims to replace animal- and plant-derived products using mammalian and plant cell cultures — approaches that are already well established in biopharmaceutical manufacturing. Comparable overlaps exist across all sectors where biobased production and organic chemistry play a central role.

Biobased economy

Switzerland is a country rich in knowledge but poor in natural raw material deposits, and extractive industries such as mining have never had a significant economic role. What was true for mineral-based deposits applies today to biobased raw materials. Switzerland's domestic biomass potential was quantified in 2017 by the Eidg. Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft (WSL).¹ The conclusion was clear: while many types of biomass are available, their quantities are small and, from an industrial perspective, largely insufficient or at best adequate for niche applications. Consequently, a centralized, resource-driven Swiss biobased strategy relying on domestic feedstocks is neither realistic nor necessary. What is needed is a bottom-up approach built on collaboration and consensus among the diverse stakeholders on where this very limited biomass could deliver the greatest value.

Carbon dioxide — from greenhouse gas to raw material

Carbon dioxide occupies a unique position in this context, as it is the only truly abundant domestic “raw material”. Achieving global climate neutrality by 2050 requires limiting worldwide CO₂ emissions to approximately 9 to 10 billion tons per year, a dramatic reduction from today's level of more than 40 billion tons. A person living in Switzerland is responsible for around 14 tons of consumption-based CO₂ emissions annually, about twice the per-capita emissions in China, seven times those in India, and roughly thirty-five times those in Tanzania, where emissions amount to just 0.4 tons per person.² Emissions reductions alone will be insufficient. Active removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere will be necessary, ideally implemented at major point sources of emissions such as cement plants, biogas facilities, and other industrial operations.

Rather than transporting CO₂ to the North Sea for long-term storage in depleted oil and gas reservoirs, the SATW is currently exploring the potential of using carbon dioxide as a feedstock to produce chemicals, polymers, proteins, and other value-added products.³ A major challenge in CO₂ utilization lies in the molecule's high thermodynamic stability, which necessitates substantial energy input for its activation and conversion. However, during the course of 3.5 billion years of evolution since the emergence of life, nature has developed highly efficient mechanisms for carbon fixation. Biotechnology therefore offers one of the most realistic and promising pathways for recovering CO₂ as a usable raw material — an opportunity that must be actively pursued.

Blockchain

In an era of intensifying global competition for talent, small countries face a strategic imperative to modernize not only their research capabilities but also their collaboration and data-sharing frameworks. Embracing collective intelligence of talents and enabling scalable, secure data exchange is difficult with traditional models rooted in fragmentation, secrecy, and patent-driven exclusivity. Although blockchain technologies are increasingly deployed in sectors such as law, healthcare administration, and logistics, their application in data-rich biotechnology remains underdeveloped.⁴ This represents an opportunity, particularly for Switzerland, which occupies a leading position in the global DLT and blockchain ecosystem, successfully developing technologies that use a decentralized, shared, and synchronized digital database across multiple network participants.

Conclusion

Strengthening resilience and limiting dependencies calls for a new generation of talent proficient in science, engineering, and digital innovation, across fields ranging from advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing to urban mining. Beyond technical expertise, future professionals must embody entrepreneurial and translational mindsets, willing to challenge conventions in how knowledge and experience are shared. In the words of Henry Ford, “We need engineers who do not yet know what cannot be done.”

References

1. WSL: Biomassepotenziale der Schweiz
2. swissinfo.ch
3. SATW: CO₂ as a resource
4. Swiss Biotech Report 2022