Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top Edinburgh based Director operating in the Biotechnology space. If you think a Director is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
David Hay
Director and Co-Founder of Stemnovate
A Professor of Tissue Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, co-Founder and Director David Hay has earned a long-standing reputation for his work in stem cell biology and hepatocyte differentiation. David Hay believes that a trans-disciplinary approach is needed to solve the failings that currently exist in the cell microenvironment. David Hay is actively involved in the translation of stem cell derived hepatocytes into scalable manufacturing processes, by defining culture conditions and developing physiologically relevant models.
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About Stemnovate: Drug Screening and Safety Testing Platforms
Stewart McGarrity
Finance Director of Celtic Renewables
Stewart McGarrity serves as finance director at Celtic Renewables.
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About Celtic Renewables: Celtic Renewables is a biofuel startup focused on the renewable energy and whisky sector.
Ian Abercrombie
Business Unit Director & Chief Operating Officer of NuCana BioMed
Ian Abercrombie has over 25 years experience in the biopharmaceutical and healthcare industry. Ian’s specific expertise includes the clinical development and commercialisation of anti-cancer medicines and companion diagnostics to enable therapies to be targeted to specific patient populations. Ian has wide biopharmaceutical and healthcare experience having initially served in the public health sector before working for Janssen Cilag, Ortho-Biotech, Bioenvision and Caris Life Sciences. Whilst at Bioenvision, Ian played a major role in developing and commercialising clofarabine, the first new drug to be approved specifically for childhood acute leukaemia in Europe for over thirty years.
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About Medannex Ltd, NuCana BioMed: NuCana BioMed, a biopharmaceutical company, develops and commercializes rationally designed medicines for significant unmet medical needs.
John Bernard
Marketing Director, EMEA of Dexcom
John Bernard EMEA Marketing Director UK Marketer of the Year 2013. Marketing ‘Vision 100’ 2014. Shortlisted ‘Digital Marketer of the Year 2014’. Founder (1996) and CEO of successful housing start-up sold in 2007. Investor. Board Member x 2.A multiple award-winning, commercially focused marketer, with an ability to use customer insight to create powerful marketing solutions. A bright, confident and self-motivated individual with a track record of using marketing to exceed specified global annual targets of over €1 billion revenue. Henley MBA qualified, with over 20 years’ telecoms, media and technology experience. Speciality of launching products into market using advertising, PR, product marketing, digital, channel activity and sponsorship. Over ten years’ experience of managing marketing budgets of over £15m successfully to exceed sales targets. Not just experience with old-school marketing, though. Expert online marketer who know how to create a buzz through inbound marketing or viral traffic through the web, social media and content discovery. Writing a good press release just doesn’t cut it anymore so now also an industry blogger who understands how the current state of the web operates and knows how to make it work. Enjoy working at both the strategic and tactical levels, developing people and teams, owning and improving business performance both internationally and within the UK. Currently the EMEA Marketing Director of Dexcom.
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About Dexcom, MENA Digital Awards: Dexcom develops, manufactures, and distributes continuous glucose monitoring systems for diabetes management.
Ian Fotheringham
Managing Director of Ingenza
Ian Fotheringham received a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Glasgow, UK, in 1986. He joined the NutraSweet division of Monsanto in Chicago, USA, constructing microbes to produce the Aspartame® sweetener. From 1993, he continued developing large-scale bioprocesses with NSC Technologies and Great Lakes Fine Chemicals. Ian co-founded Ingenza in 2003, has published 35 papers and articles, and holds eight current patents.
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About Ingenza: Ingenza is an industrial biotechnology company.
Andrew Hall-Ponselè
Founder and Director of Operations of Biotangents
Andy designed the Leapfrog Assembly™ technology upon which Biotangents was founded and led the successful project to apply it to the biosynthesis of high-value terpenoids. He now leads operations at Biotangents and is part of an ambitious team that has secured and fulfilled multiple contracts to perform DNA manipulation work for industrial and academic customers. Andy has been involved in synthetic biology since 2008 when, as a student under Professor Chris French, he led the University of Edinburgh iGEM team to a gold medal. He holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, where he used metabolic engineering approaches to provide new insights into the control of metabolism in plants. On his return to Edinburgh, Andy worked as a Senior Scientist in a University of Edinburgh-based start-up, delivering collaborative projects as varied as synthetic promoter design and polysaccharide biosynthesis.
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About Biotangents: Biotangents develop pen-side diagnostic devices to detect infectious diseases in livestock quickly.
Lina Gasiūnaitė
Founder and Director of Science of Biotangents
As the Director of Science at Biotangents, Lina is leading delivery of Moduleic Sensing™ for the diagnosis of infectious diseases in livestock. Lina completed her undergraduate studies in Molecular Biology at Vilnius University and holds an MSc in Biotechnology from the University of Edinburgh. As part of her dissertation, she incorporated standardisation into a proprietary combinatorial DNA assembly technology, making it compatible with the widely used BioBrick™ standard. Lina also acted as an advisor to the University of Edinburgh’s 2013 gold medal-winning iGEM team. After graduation, Lina continued to work in DNA manipulation and metabolic engineering of bacteria, delivering varied projects with local SMEs and multinational partners.
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About Biotangents: Biotangents develop pen-side diagnostic devices to detect infectious diseases in livestock quickly.
Douglas Martin
Managing Director of MiAlgae
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About MiAlgae: MiAlgae is a new-age microalgal production company .
