New Biomechatronics Apprentices Receive Warm Welcome At Wake Tech

By Kathy Neal, NCBiotech

Biomechatronic technicians work where maintenance, engineering, and bioprocess knowledge meet, yet federal occupational data has no clear category for them, so demand is hard to gauge. In North Carolina, employers and educators are not waiting for the statistics to catch up. Wake Tech's eight-month BioMechatronics Apprenticeship welcomed its second cohort this fall: 10 apprentices, sponsored by CSL Seqirus and Merck, hearing from college deans and workforce leaders about what the program asks of them. A Brookings analysis explains why the role resists measurement and what clustered employment data shows about maintenance jobs in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Read on for what apprentices are expected to do and how the data gap is shaping hiring.