Our History

The Recovery Conference Series has a history spanning well over a quarter century, with the first meeting, entitled "Advances in Fermentation Recovery Process Technology", held in 1981 in Banff, Canada. Two pioneers of recovery of biologic products science and engineering, Drs. Alan Michaels (then at Stanford University) and Harvey Blanch (University of California at Berkeley), co-chaired the inaugural meeting. Their vision and ability to bring together industrial and academic leaders to define and address downstream processing challenges within the biotechnology industry, which was newly emerging at the time, remains the central mandate of the Conference Series.

The second meeting in the conference series, then co-sponsored by the Engineering Foundation, was held at Sea Island, Georgia. It marked the first time the biennial meeting was called “Recovery of Biologic Products” and also confirmed that future meetings would be held in environments of outstanding beauty and attended by a delegation comprised of industrial, academic and regulatory leaders of the field. Since 1994, the Conference Series has been sponsored by the American Chemical Society, Division of Biochemical Technology (BIOT).

Further history of the first ten biennial meetings of the Recovery Conference Series is described here.

Building on the excellence of those early meetings, the Recovery Conference Series is now the most well-established, respected and sought after international conference in the arena of downstream bioprocessing. Biennial Meetings within the Conference Series are now significantly over-subscribed and attendance is therefore by invitation only.