The ISPE Student Chapter Karlsruhe established a novel event format with the 1st Virtual Biotech Symposium @KIT on 11.05.2021, where more than 130 students, PhD students and interested people were able to get to know current science and research in the field of pharma & biotech. 13 speakers from different disciplines presented their exciting and inspiring projects within the three sessions separation technology, printing technologies and digitization. In subsequent panel discussions, current and future trends were discussed and a holistic classification of the research projects was ventured in the context of the many challenges and opportunities that the biotech industry will have to face in the coming years.