Global Technical Product Specialist
Thermo Fisher Scientific

David Chau

Stuart Tindal, Sartorius, and David Chau, Thermo Fisher

connected with Stuart Tindal, portfolio manager, Intensified Downstream Systems, Sartorius; and David Chau, global technical product specialist, Thermo Fisher—both Bio-Process Systems Alliance committee leaders—discuss automation, single-use technology challenges, and smarter process control in bioprocessing.

Watch the 2-part video interview with Tindal and Chau:
Part 1: 

How Predictive Control Is Reshaping Continuous Bioprocessing

Stuart Tindal and David Chau on Sensors, Standards, and Shared Progress

PT: How Should Companies Think About Integrating Automation into Continuous Bioprocessing?

 Automation isn't optional anymore, it's an integral part of any continuous or advanced bioprocessing operation. The industry has moved decisively away from purely manual operations. As processes have become more data-driven and connectivity has increased, the need for robust control and automation has become paramount. It's no longer a nice-to-have; it's a must-have for maintaining consistency and productivity.

 The foundation must be process understanding. Before you can automate anything, you need to know what you're trying to make continuous. You must consider what the inputs and outputs are, what parameters matter, how you'll measure them through sensors or equipment. People entering continuous bioprocessing right now can feel overwhelmed, whether they're building a process from scratch or retrofitting an existing one. Going back to the fundamentals of your process is often the most valuable first step.

How Do Single-Use Technologies Fit in with the Demands of Continuous Manufacturing?

 It's a real tension. Single-use technology has earned its place in the industry with faster turnaround times, flexibility, speed at the R&D and pilot scale. But those same benefits can become concerns when you're talking about commercial-scale continuous manufacturing, where processes run for weeks or even months. Single-use was designed to be limited. As an industry, vendors and end users must come together to honestly assess the limitations and innovate around them.

 It comes down to the materials of construction. When something is designed for a single day of use and you're asking it to perform for weeks, critical failure points emerge. Are the sensors drifting over time? Are the actuators, the pumps and valves moving plastic components, going to withstand prolonged friction and wear? The work being done now is about understanding how far these materials can be pushed and what alternatives or design changes can support longer continuous runs.

What Does the Future of Process Control Look Like in Continuous Bioprocessing?

 We're moving beyond conventional PID controllers toward predictive and model-based control. In a continuous process, your operating window becomes more of a tunnel, you need to steer the process along that tunnel in real time, being adaptive and anticipatory. That requires a very fast control and response loop. For more complex or labile molecules with tighter critical quality attributes, advanced predictive control isn't a luxury, it's what enables you to maintain the process trajectory from start to finish.

 Continuous manufacturing generates enormous amounts of data, and the question becomes what we do with it. Model-based approaches make a lot of sense in this context; with enough data, you can build predictive models that guide processes rather than simply hold set points. The shift is from reactive control to genuinely steering and predicting where your process is headed. That's where the industry is going, and it's an exciting direction.

Articles

Automation is now foundational to continuous and advanced bioprocessing, driven by increased connectivity and data-centric operations requiring robust control to maintain consistency and productivity. Effective implementation starts with deep process understanding—defining critical inputs, outputs, and measurable parameters—especially when retrofitting legacy operations. Single-use systems offer flexibility and rapid changeover, yet commercial continuous runs expose durability limits in materials, sensors, pumps, and valves. Process control is shifting from PID to predictive, model-based strategies that use high-frequency feedback and large datasets to steer processes within tight operating windows.

Stuart Tindal, Sartorius, and David Chau, Thermo Fisher, discuss automation, single-use technology limits, and predictive control shaping continuous bioprocessing's future.

Q&A: How Continuous Bioprocessing Is Evolving With Smarter Automation

Stuart Tindal and David Chau discuss spectroscopic sensor selection for continuous bioprocessing and how industry collaboration drives shared innovation.

Stuart Tindall and David Chau on Sensors, Standards, and Shared Progress

Access Part 1 of this interview on automation, single-use durability challenges, and the shift to predictive control in continuous bioprocessing.

, Stuart Tindal, portfolio manager, Intensified Downstream Systems, Sartorius; and David Chau, global technical product specialist, Thermo Fisher—both Bio-Process Systems Alliance (BPSA) committee leaders—discuss spectroscopic sensor selection for continuous bioprocessing and the broader role of industry collaboration in advancing the field.

On the sensor side, Tindall argues that no single spectroscopic technique is universally superior; each occupies its own place in the toolbox depending on where it is deployed in the process. Key selection criteria include specificity, response time, ease of reference model generation, and process integration. He favors UV-visible spectrometry in downstream applications and Raman or near-infrared approaches upstream, where the complexity and noise inside a bioreactor demand particularly high specificity. Chau adds that sensor longevity and measurement drift are critical concerns in continuous processing, where instruments must perform reliably over extended periods. Both speakers point to the real frontier: combining multiple spectroscopic modalities—Raman, UV, near-infrared, capacitance, and frequency scanning—into integrated computational models that can monitor and control specific process parameters with greater precision.

The conversation then turns to BPSA's role in the industry. Both speakers describe the organization as a rare forum in which competitors set aside commercial interests to tackle shared challenges, from supply chain resilience during COVID-19 to extractables and leachables standards for single-use plastics, to updates to USP chapter 665. BPSA's technical committees — covering automation, continuous manufacturing, cell and gene therapy, and X-ray sterilization, among others — bring together component suppliers, equipment makers, CMOs, and biomanufacturers to develop industry-wide alignment. Chau captures the spirit well: when competitors share a room and a common purpose, collective innovation becomes possible.

Videos

At INTERPHEX 2026, David Chau and Stuart Tindal discuss automation, single-use durability challenges, and the shift to predictive control in continuous bioprocessing.

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, David Chau of Thermo Fisher and Dr. Stuart Tindal of Sartorius, both members of the Bioprocess Systems Alliance (BPSA), discuss the intersection of automation, single-use technologies, and continuous bioprocessing, as well as the challenges manufacturers face as the industry evolves.

Chau and Tindal agree that automation has moved from a nice-to-have to an essential requirement in modern bioprocessing. As operations become increasingly data-driven and interconnected, robust automation is indispensable for maintaining process control and consistency. Chau emphasizes that successful implementation begins with deep process understanding—knowing the inputs, outputs, and parameters that need to be controlled—before attempting to automate, whether building a continuous process from scratch or retrofitting an existing one.

A central tension the speakers address is the durability of single-use technologies in continuous manufacturing contexts. While single-use systems offer speed and flexibility that are well-suited to R&D and pilot-scale work, those same characteristics become liabilities when processes must run for weeks or months at commercial scale. The industry, vendors, and end users alike must confront the material and mechanical limitations of these technologies and innovate accordingly.

On process control, both Tindal and Chau advocate moving beyond conventional PID controllers toward predictive and model-based control strategies. For complex or labile molecules with tight critical quality attributes, advanced control loops that are fast, adaptive, and predictive are essential. Tindal frames says rather than simply reacting to set points, manufacturers need to actively steer processes along a continuous trajectory, keeping within an ever-narrowing window of acceptable parameters from start to finish.