Joy Chen
Malcolm Faers
Chris Urch
I did my first degree at Cambridge reading natural sciences and chemistry. I stayed at Cambridge to complete my PhD on organic synthesis with Professor Ian Fleming and then moved to the United States to undertake post-doctoral research, again on organic synthesis, with Professor Barry Trost. On returning to this country I started work for ICI Agrochemicals where I remained for 16 years as it became Zeneca and eventually Syngenta. During this time, I worked on both fungicide and insecticide research, principally sterol biosynthesis inhibitors and acetylcholine receptor agonists respectively.
After leaving Syngenta I joined Amura, a start-up company in Cambridge. Amura was developing antibiotics and in particular a β-lactamase inhibitor. I stayed with Amura for three years and then joined Glycoform for six years, a spin-out from the University of Oxford, where I was the Research Director. Glycoform researched various ways of improving pharmaceuticals by the use of sugars.
After leaving Glycoform I worked as a consultant, increasingly for Redag Crop Protection who are researching novel agrochemicals. Four years ago, I joined them full time as Head of Chemistry.
Jonathan Statham
