CBID Council Biographies and Contacts

The CBID is advised by a Division Council

Ben Davis is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford.  His group's research centers on chemical biology with an emphasis on carbohydrates and proteins. In particular, the group's interests encompass synthesis and methodology, inhibitor design, protein engineering, drug delivery, molecular modeling, molecular biology, and glycoscience.

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Dr Andy Merritt is Associate Director of Chemistry at Medical Research Council Technology (MRCT), focussing on innovative new initiatives to fast track drug discovery. He formerly worked as Director of Discovery Medicinal Chemistry at GlaxoSmithKline, a role which encompassed global responsibility for both outsource support for lead discovery chemistry and for the provision of molecular tools for target validation.

His background has been in the application of combinatorial chemistry and technologies to drug discovery since the development of the approach in the early 1990s. Andy formerly sat on the RSC Industry and Technology Forum Executive (now ITD) and was a cofounder of the High Throughput Chemistry and New Technologies Interest Group, holding the role of secretary between 2001 and 2005.

He was the industrial organiser of the RSC medicinal chemistry summer school for the period 1999 to 2003. He is a member of the Royal Society Higher Education Working Group, which is currently undertaking a pilot project to develop a deeper understanding of the way in which science and mathematics courses must evolve to meet future skills challenges. He is also a European regional editor for the journal Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening, and presents lectures to undergraduates and postgraduates on drug discovery and new technologies at UK universities (Imperial College London, Sussex University, Reading) and at the RSC Medicinal Chemistry summer school.

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David Foley is a Research Fellow at the School of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham.  Previous to this, David was a Research Fellow at the Drug Discovery Division at the Centre for Cancer Research & Cell Biology at Queen’s University Belfast. David completed a PhD in organic Chemistry at the University of Manchester studying the PepT1 transporter as a means of enhancing drug delivery.

Outside of medicinal chemistry, David has served on the RSC Manchester YMN committee as Chair, Vice-Chair and Communications Officer. Additionally he serves as the Northern Ireland representative for the UK Research Staff Association and he also acts as a liaison between UKRSA and its Irish counterpart, the Irish Research Staff Association.

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Klaus studied chemistry in Cincinnati, USA and Stuttgart, Germany. He completed a PhD in Biochemistry at MPI München-Martinsried in Germany before embarking on a career in the pharmaceutical industry, in particular drug discovery.  His expertise is in biophysical characterisation of proteins and protein-ligand interactions and biological mass spectrometry/proteomics/biomarker research.

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Tom Heightman is a Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Astex Therapeutics. Prior to joining Astex he spent 10 years as a medicinal chemist in GlaxoSmithKline, culminating in leadership of the Neurology Lead Discovery department, followed by 3 years as Project Manager of SGC’s Epigenetics Chemical Probes Consortium in Oxford University.

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Molly Stevens is Professor of Biomedical Materials and Regenerative Medicine and the Research Director for Biomedical Material Sciences in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London.

She joined ICL in 2004 after a Postdoctoral training in the field of tissue engineering with Professor Robert Langer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to this she graduated from Bath University with a First class honours degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences and was then awarded a PhD in Biophysics and Surface Analysis at the University of Nottingham (2000).

She is the main founder of spin-out RepRegen and won the ACES pan-European Amgen Life Sciences Award in 2009 for transforming outstanding science into healthcare products.

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Rob Field is a Project Leader in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the John Innes Centre (JIC) and honorary Professor of Chemistry at the University of East Anglia (UEA). He has over 25 years experience in chemical biology research, focussing on carbohydrate chemistry, associated enzymology and enabling technologies. His research interests range from bacterial adhesion and infection, through starch and plant cell wall biochemistry to chemical genomics approaches to dissect carbohydrate metabolism.

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Tom Brown is Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of Southampton. His research interests centre on Nucleic acids chemistry, structure, DNA sequence recognition and applications of nucleic acids in biology, nanotechnology and medicine. He is co-founder of three Biotech companies and has published over 250 research papers and patents.

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Ali Tavassoli is a Reader in chemical biology at the University of Southampton, jointly appointed at the School of Chemistry and the Cancer Sciences division of the Faculty of Medicine.
His research is directed towards understanding cellular protein-protein interaction networks, and developing molecules that tackle diseases such as Cancer and HIV by targeting these protein networks.

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Mike page is currently deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Huddersfield with responsibility for planning, resources and research.  He was Head of the Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences from 1985 until 1997, and Dean of the School of Applied Sciences from 1989 to 2003.

His main areas of research interest include β-lactam antibiotics, enzymes in synthesis, and kinetics and mechanisms in organic chemistry and biochemistry.

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