Meet the team

Rick Chapman has over 30 years of experience working in high tech industries, predominantly Semiconductors and Software. After 5 years with Marconi, he joined STMicroelectronics in 1990, and has since launched multiple successful startups. Over nearly 12 years, Rick held a variety of international positions, including Semicustom R&D Director and Business Development Director – Microprocessors.

Michael is a business and technology leader. He earned his doctorate in Computational Photonics from Heriot-Watt University focussing on the application of machine learning to complex human behavioural patterns and computer vision problems. Michael has experience bringing novel capability and applications from conception to product in genomics, defence, oil and gas, and law enforcement industries.

Ben leads information technology, infrastructure and information security for GenomeKey. He brings over 9 years of industry experience in security architecting, secure software design and systems administration. Ben also brings business, operational and financial expertise to the team.

Chris is software and product development lead, drawing on his experience leading software engineering and research teams, architecting solutions and developing bespoke prototypes in technical BD roles. He has experience applying software solutions to the modelling of complex biological systems and leading technical projects from design through to production.

Daniel is an experienced molecular biologist who has a background in developing in vitro diagnostics for sepsis detection, protein engineering, DNA sequencing and various molecular techniques relevant to the sample preparation challenges in this project. Dr. Rogerson completed his PhD and postdoctoral studies at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology (LMB), University of Cambridge.

David Luck is GenomeKey’s project manager. He brings 30+ years of product delivery and business operations management across a range of industries, including construction and civil engineering, through to power generation, fintech, agriculture, civil service and pharma. David has experience managing multi-million pound projects with teams of 300+ people.

Chris Brain MSc (CCO) is GenomeKey’s Commercial Director, leading our commercial strategy, with a focus on NHS collaborations, access to clinical samples and early commercialisation of novel IP. Chris has over fifteen years’ commercial experience in the medtech sector, primarily with in vitro diagnostics, and with a focus on sepsis diagnostics, having previously worked on Roche SeptiFast, Abbott IRIDICA and T2 Biosystems IVDs.

Dr Clio Andreae is an experienced molecular microbiologist with over 9 years of postdoctoral research experience, working within academia and industry. Within academia she worked on anaerobic respiration of Burkholderia pseudomallei at BSL3, and on Neisseria meningitis vaccine candidate design. While within industry she worked with the Infectious Disease Preclinical Drug Discovery team at Charles River, working with a wide range of clients and contributing to the client offering, bringing in the Galleria mellonella model system to the company. She has a wealth of molecular microbiology experience with experience in a wide range of in vitro assays relating to pre-clinical drug discovery, bacterial mutagenesis, bacterial pathogenesis and virulence, biochemistry, persister cell assays and antimicrobial resistance detection.

Dr. Joshua Dyer is a molecular biologist with a broad range of expertise across immunology, microbiology, molecular methods, microscopy and genomics. He completed his PhD studies at the University of Exeter in 2020, where he investigated the role of the sphingosine-1-phosphate signalling pathway in governing the interaction between Staphylococcus aureus and macrophages. Since joining GenomeKey straight after his PhD studies, Josh has spent the last three years developing the chemistry underlying GenomeKey’s bacterial DNA extraction technology. Outside of work, Josh is an avid surfer!

Jack joined us in 2022, having recently graduated with a BSc in Biology with the Open University. Jack brings over 7 years of Microbiology and QA experience to the role of research assistant. He provides support to the scientists; conducting experiments and maintaining the laboratory.

Dr Sarah Palmer is a cell biologist with a PhD in biomedical science from the University of Sheffield. Before joining GenomeKey, Sarah was a postdoc for five years at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, where she studied breast cancer cell metastasis, cell migration in 3D matrices and how, in triple negative breast cancers, the metabolism of cancer cells is linked to the release of mitochondrial DNA in exosomes. From her research career Sarah has developed a diverse background in cell and molecular biology techniques with direct knowledge into how to design and develop novel protocols to answer specific biology research questions. Sarah has published several papers, taught students up to PhD level and has presented her work at both UK and international conferences.

Dr. Charlotte Durant has joined GenomeKey following a PhD in Bioinformatics at the University of Leicester Department of Genetics and a BSc in Biology from the University of Bath. Bringing her experience in bacterial genomics, metagenomics and Next Generation Sequencing, Charlie has joined GenomeKey to further develop bioinformatics capacity and collaborate with the Science and Machine Learning teams. Charlie is leading our whole genome sequencing process, and bridges the gap between our microbiology and computer science capabilities.

Dr. Francesco Valente obtained his Ph.D in Biological Sciences from the University of Exeter and M.sc Degree in Biotechnology from the University of Perugia. During his Ph.D he developed novel bio-imaging approaches using microscopy, microfluidics and computational biology to investigate single cell response in plants and filamentous fungi. Following his Ph.D, he moved as a Research Staff in Molecular Genetics to the University of Bath, Milner Centre for Evolution, in a group specialised in genome editing. He then worked as a Senior Scientist R&D at Lig-Nanowise, a spin-off company from the University of Manchester, specialised in Super-Resolution Microscopy, in a project aiming to develop a bio-nanoscope for virus imaging. Francesco has joined GenomeKey as a Scientist to further develop his interest in cell biology and microbiology and provide support in the Research and Development of the company’s technology.

Roderick McNeill achieved a first class BSc (Hons) in biological chemistry and MSc with distinction in software development. Previous experience includes work as a postgraduate research student at the University of Glasgow working on developing deep learning based algorithms and tools for single cell analysis. He is now a machine learning engineer at GenomeKey responsible for design and implementation of new machine learning based techniques for antimicrobial susceptibility prediction.

Oktawia Glimasinska is an experienced administrative assistant who joined our team in December 2022. Oktawia previously worked in medical negligence and mortgage enforcement. Her role is to provide essential support to our growing team and ensure our operations run smoothly.

Dr. Md Ehtashamul Haque (Microfluidic Scientist) joined GenomeKey after extensive work in microfluidics during his PhD and post-doctoral work at Heriot-Watt University. His main research focus was on blood-based diagnostics, such as blood plasma separation and cell lysis for drug monitoring. He also holds a BSc degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and an MSc in Smart Systems Integration, which have enabled him to integrate microfluidics with microelectronics. With a passion for innovation and technology, and an aligned research history, Dr. Haque’s goal is to help transform GenomeKey’s biochemical technology into lab-on-a-chip devices.

Réka joined GenomeKey in March 2022 after completing her Masters in Artificial Intelligence at the University in Edinburgh and Computer Science BSc in Budapest. At GenomeKey, Reka is part of the Machine Learning team, where she is working on researching, developing and applying new technologies in order to improve and extend our machine learning models and to provide clinicians the possible best antimicrobial resistance predictions.

Onyx has a background in pharmacy and healthcare and joined GenomeKey in 2021. Onyx leads GenomeKey’s administrative functionality, from invoicing to HR matters. Onyx is also GenomeKey’s welfare officer, and ensures all staff have a comfortable and accepting place to work and thrive.