Barry Clare, Chairperson
Barry has almost twenty years experience in the healthcare industry. As a main board director of the Boots Company plc where he was managing director of the successful consumer healthcare division, Boots Healthcare International, responsible for the global expansion of Nurofen, Strepsils, Clearasil etc. Since leaving Boots, he has set up his own company, Clarat Partners LLP, and engineered several private equity backed transactions, including the carve out of Betapharm, a German generics business, eventually sold to Dr. Reddy for £460m. He has recently set up a new over the counter business, Healthcare Brands International and advises technology developers on the commercialisation of their innovations.
Dr Stephen Franklin, Chief Executive
Stephen has over 15 years commercial experience in the life science industries, with most roles dedicated to the commercialisation of new technology. He is the Founder and former CEO of Provexis plc, an AIM-listed company dedicated to developing proprietary food ingredients for licensing to major brand holding companies across the functional food, dietary supplement and medical food industries. Prior to that, Stephen was a Principal Executive with the technology commercialisation company, ANGLE plc, and held a business development role with Manchester Biotech (now Manchester Innovation), one of the largest campus-based incubators in Europe. Stephen has a BSc in Biology, a PhD in Biochemistry and an MBA with distinction.
Alex Merolli, Non-Executive Director
Alex has 35 years of experience in the food and industrial biotechnology industries with a career focus on research, business development and marketing of functional foods and ingredients. He is currently a consultant specialising in strategic market assessments of emerging food-based technologies. He sits on the Advisory Board of LSP Bioventures and was a former member of the advisory board with Burrill & Company's Life Sciences Nutraceuticals Capital Fund. Previously, Alex was Director of Marketing for the Specialties & Alliances business unit at Genencor (now Danisco) and has held senior roles at Haarmann & Reimer and The Pillsbury Company. Alex has a BSc in Food & Nutrition and an MBA in Marketing Management.
Dr Ben Ferrari, Non-Executive Director
Ben is currently Managing Director of IP Management for Imprimatur Capital, a significant shareholder in Evgen. He has previously worked with a wide range of knowledge and technology transfer programmes in the UK higher education sector. Before joining Imprimatur, he was the Director of UniSdirect, the technology transfer and research support division of the University of Surrey. Prior to that, he served as Head of Research and Enterprise at Royal Holloway, University of London and was a Director of Research and Enterprise at the University of St Andrews. Ben has played a leading role in development of two of the largest UK higher education knowledge transfer partnerships; WestFocus and the SETsquared partnership.
Dr David J Kyle
In 1980, David Kyle received his Ph.D. at the University of Alberta, Canada, in the field of Lipid Biochemistry. He completed postdoctoral research in Japan, France, and the UK, before leading a research team studying algal-based nutrition and life support systems for NASA. In 1985 he co-founded Martek Biosciences Corporation where he developed the strategic plan that resulted in the commercialization of the Company's DHA- and ARA-based nutritional ingredients that are added to infant formulas worldwide. In 2001, David founded Advanced BioNutrition Corporation, dedicated to providing sustainable functional nutrition in aquaculture and disease control through the oral delivery of probiotics and other nutritional elements using a novel microencapsulation technology. As Chairman and CEO he secured over $20 Million in equity financing for the Company until his retirement in 2008.
Professor Barbara Halkier
Barbara Halkier obtained her PhD in 1988 from the University of Copenhagen. Her postdoctoral training was carried out at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, where she also spent a sabbatical year in 2002. Barbara is considered to be a leading expert within the field of plant secondary metabolites, with particular emphasis on glucosinolates. Her research includes pathway elucidation, identification of biosynthetic genes, regulatory networks and transport processes, as well as pathway engineering in various host organisms. The latter includes engineering the glucosinolate pathway into tobacco plants, which was the first example of production of glucosinolates outside the Brassicales order. She has documented leadership in coordination of both national and international grants, and supervised and mentored numerous postdoctoral scientists and PhD students.