Louis began his career in pharmaceuticals R&D with Roche, Glaxo and SmithKline during which period he achieved international recognition in the discovery of NCEs in infectious diseases. He was one of the UK’s first biotechnology entrepreneurs establishing Xenova and Brax both of which achieved successful exits via IPO and trade sale respectively. He was the first recipient of the Ernst & Young Biotechnology Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Since 2000 he has been active in investing and building businesses in the private and public equity markets across the health sector. Venture capital investments have been with Kurma Partners, Sitka Partners, Noble Group and Alderley Park Ventures. He has considerable executive and non-executive Board experience with over 20 quoted and private companies. He has a Ph.D. from Imperial College, London and D.Sc. from the U of Strathclyde.

An experienced Senior Executive with both General Management and Business Development experience in the pharmaceutical/CRO arena. Paul has an understanding of the drug development process from discovery to clinical research gained through more than 29 years in the CRO/pharmaceutical sector. A strategic thinker and management professional with experience gained in both small and large companies and with recent start-up experience including leading funding discussions with VCs and other corporate finance groups. Paul recently turned around and sold CXR Biosciences to Concept Lifesciences in late 2015. Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, 2013.

Sylviane has more than 20 years’ experience in scientific research and drug discovery environment. Sylviane has a track record in building and leading outstanding and productive teams into seamless successful enterprises in start-up and medium and large pharma environment. Prior to BioAscent Sylviane was Head of Global Compound repository and in-vitro Screening (Merck Sharp & Dohme, Newhouse Scotland). She was also responsible for managing a portfolio of early Drug Discovery projects in Cardiovascular from Target Identification and validation to Lead Optimisation. Sylviane attained her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France, followed by post-doctoral positions at the INSERM U366 Laboratory, France and University of Manchester, UK under the Wellcome Trust International Fellowship.

Angus has over 15 years’ experience as a practising medicinal chemist leading both project and medicinal chemistry delivery in multinational and multidisciplinary teams. In his most recent role as Head of Chemistry at the European Screening Centre Newhouse he was Medicinal Chemistry lead of the European Lead Factory project responsible for over 30 hit to leads programmes. Prior to this Angus has held leadership roles at Organon, Schering-Plough, MSD, Prosidion and Redx Oncology. During his time in pre-clinical drug discovery he has had broad exposure and experience of working across a diverse range of therapeutic areas and target classes from hit generation to candidate nomination. Angus has a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Strathclyde University and carried out Postgraduate studies at Cambridge University. He is a co-author on over 30 papers and patents.

With over 15 years working in drug discovery Stuart has extensive experience of developing and trouble-shooting novel screening assays, designing screening cascades, compound screening, hit validation and supporting hit to lead and lead optimisation programs. Throughout the 5 years of the European Lead Factory project he held the position of Head of Biology at the European Screening Centre (ESC), leading a team of bioscientists in prosecuting and triaging the output of over 90 high throughput screens across all major target classes and disease indications. Prior to this Stuart helped establish the Dundee Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) where he spent 7 years as a project and then team leader working across a wide array of novel drug targets and assays. He also had a leading operational role in DDU-Industry partnerships with both large pharma and SMEs.

Angelo is a highly experienced computational chemist, project leader and strategic contributor to discovery teams, and has over 15 years’ experience working across different organisations in US and UK. He has a PhD in computational chemistry from the University of Nottingham. Prior to joining BioAscent, Angelo led the computational chemistry and artificial intelligence team at the drug discovery unit at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow. Angelo is an expert in in silico structure-based and fragments-based methodologies applied to drug design with a passion for machine learning. He is a co-author on more than 30 publications and patents including a book chapter on fragments library design. Angelo is also a reviewer for several highly regarded journals and fellowships, and serves as an advisory board member for several international conferences.

Duncan is an experienced medicinal chemist having worked in the pharmaceutical and not-for-profit sectors for over 20 years. He has broad scientific expertise in several therapeutic areas, working in both lead finding and lead optimisation project teams. Duncan is expert in fragment-based hit finding strategies and developing HTS campaigns. In his previous roles at MSD and more latterly, the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research (BICR), Duncan led multiple internal and cross-site collaborative project teams and managed outsourced chemistry efforts across different companies. Duncan spent over 10 years at the BICR working in the area of fragment-based drug discovery, prioritising and developing mM affinity fragment hits to high affinity lead series. Duncan is a co-author on 20 papers and patents.

Brian has more than 25 year’s experience in pharmaceutical research & development with over 15 years of those within preclinical drug discovery. He attained his PhD in Molecular Pharmacology from the University of St Andrews before undertaking post-doctoral positions at the University of Liverpool and University of Glasgow. During this time, he was a co-author or more than 15 peer reviewed publications. Brian previously worked within Organon, Schering Plough & MSD as a Senior Scientist gaining expertise across a diverse range of technologies, target classes and therapeutic areas. His projects spanned the full range of preclinical research from target discovery to clinical candidate selection. Laterally Brian led project management teams within contract research and innovation organisations providing services to clients ranging from start-ups to major pharma. As well as managing the teams, he was directly responsible for the successful delivery of over 25 projects.

Mike is an experienced life sciences professional with a track record in sales and marketing strategy, general management, licensing and contract negotiation. Mike was formerly Head of Sales and Marketing at CXR Biosciences, an investigative toxicology CRO. Following CXR’s acquisition by Concept Life Sciences in 2015 he became Vice President Business Development Safety & Toxicology. Prior to his time at CXR, Mike worked in business development and licensing at the specialty pharmaceutical company Ardana plc, and held various pharmaceutical industry management consultancy roles at ZS Associates, Deloitte and Arthur Andersen Business Consulting. Mike has a PhD in genomics from the University of Cambridge, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

Dr Glenn Crocker is Executive Director of Pioneer Group, a company that creates human and planetary health ecosystems through venture building and real estate. With over £1 billion of life science assets under management it is the largest fully integrated business of its kind in Europe. At Pioneer, Glenn is responsible for the venture building and investment business. Over 30 years in the industry, he has co-founded and/or invested in many life science companies, especially in the discovery and development services sector. As founding CEO of BioCity Group, he built a successful business that was acquired by Trinity Investment Management in 2021, providing an excellent exit for shareholders and leading to the formation of Pioneer Group. He has a D Phil in Immunology from Oxford University and qualified as a chartered accountant with EY, where he ran the UK Biotech practice. In 2014 he was awarded an MBE for services to the biotechnology industry.

Ian is a Chartered Accountant and an experienced Finance Director/Chief Financial Officer with a successful track record gained in SMEs and PLCs in the manufacturing and customer service industries - particularly within life sciences, pharmaceuticals and FMCG. Ian has successful record of achievement as a CFO within Private Equity backed businesses with credibility gained from developing positive and effective relationships with stakeholders, and successful participation in exits with a proven track record in securing funding for growth from both public sector finance providers as well as institutional finance providers. Ian’s career is varied having worked primarily in the UK but with extensive overseas travel. As well as heading up a number of large finance teams Ian’s experience extends to successfully evaluating and commercially shaping high value projects including worldwide ERP system implementations as well as mergers and acquisition experience.

James is a highly experienced medicinal chemist and life sciences executive with a strong scientific background in drug discovery and development, combined with many years of strategic leadership experience as a board member and company director. James has a strong track record for building high-performing scientific teams and scaling drug discovery businesses through a mixture of organic growth and targeted acquisition. James has worked across a range of different modalities and target classes, enjoying a career that has spanned CROs, CDMOs, Research Institutes and Big Pharma companies, giving him a broad range of experience and understanding of the drug discovery process. Prior to joining BioAscent, James was Chief Operating Officer at Charnwood Discovery, where he led the successful expansion and integration of the company’s bioscience, chemistry, and ADME teams – working at the client interface to ensure the consistent delivery of high-quality, creative solutions and the development of new opportunities for growth. James was also initially responsible for the Chemistry Business Unit at Charnwood and led the expansion of its service offering and client base. James also spent seven years as a Principal Chemist at Cancer Research UK’s Manchester Institute, where he successfully led several oncology projects. At BioAscent, James works at the client interface in collaboration with key stakeholders across all aspects of the business to further differentiate our value proposition – creating new opportunities for growth through the introduction of new clients and services.

Prior to joining BioAscent as Chief Scientific Officer in 2018, Phil had over 30 years medicinal chemistry and drug discovery experience from Roche, Organon, Schering-Plough, Merck and the University of Dundee including senior roles as Executive Director, Acting Site Head and managing global project portfolios. Numerous clinical candidates, across a range of therapeutic areas and target families, resulted from groups for which he was responsible. He led the work establishing the European Screening Centre team at Biocity Glasgow in Newhouse; a group that has been instrumental in delivering validated hit series for SMEs and academics across Europe through collaborative programmes as part of the IMI-funded European Lead Factory. In 2020, Phil was seconded to establish the Lighthouse Lab in Glasgow, a key element in the UK Covid-19 testing network. In 2022, Phil stepped back from the CSO role to take up his current position as Chief Scientific Advisor at BioAscent. Phil’s postgraduate studies were carried out at the University of Manchester and Imperial College. Phil was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2005, he chaired the Medicinal Chemistry interest group of the Royal Society of Chemistry for 8 years, chaired the organising committee of the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry – International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC-ISMC) in 2016 and sat on the Executive Committee of the EFMC for four years. He is a co-author on over 80 scientific papers and patents.

David is a Partner at Maven Capital Partners where he is a member of Maven’s Investment Committee and is responsible for sourcing and executing private equity investments in Scotland as well as technology and life science investments across the UK. His current investments include Blacktrace Group, Curo Compensation, Optoscribe, QikServe, CB Technology and BioAscent. David started his career as a scientist with GlaxoSmithKline. After completing his PhD, he moved to international consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie (and then parent Deutsche Bank) where he supported the healthcare banking team, advising clients on their corporate and licensing strategies; and performing due diligence projects on companies, products and technologies. David joined Aberdeen Asset Management’s private equity division (spun-out to form Maven in 2009) in September 2007 as Fund Manager for an early-stage technology fund. David has a First Class Honours degree in Pharmacy, a PhD (Molecular Biology/Gene Delivery) from the University of Bath and a MBA from The University of Edinburgh.