The Team

CEO – Dr Barry Porter
Barry has over twenty years of drug discovery experience working in the pharmaceutical industry. He was chief executive of ReOx Ltd, a biotechnology spin out from the University of Oxford which entered into a ground breaking co-development deal with a major international bio-pharmaceutical company in its first year of operations. He is a non-executive director of Curidium Medica plc and InhibOx Limited. Prior to these roles, Barry held senior positions at De Novo Pharmaceuticals (VP drug discovery and main Board Director), Pharmagene (VP therapeutics), Rhone-Poulenc Rorer (senior director of medicinal chemistry) and Glaxo Group Research (research leader). He gained his PhD from the University of California, San Diego followed by a post doctoral fellowship with Syntex in Palo Alto.

Chief Scientific Officer – Dr Kirsty Hewitson
Kirsty combines a strong academic record with the experience of playing a crucial role in the establishment of a successful University spin out. She was Director of Biochemistry for ReOx Ltd, holding responsibility for managing and developing internal research programs, mediating external collaborations and liaising with the academic Founders. Prior to this, she held a Glasstone Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford where she worked extensively on the hypoxia signalling pathway, contributing to the IP upon which ReOx was founded. Kirsty gained her DPhil with Sir Prof Jack Baldwin at the University of Oxford in addition to her MChem from the same institution.

Research Analyst – Dr Lars Gredsted
Lars combines a strong academic background in science with commercial experience from strategic consulting. Before joining ULS, Lars worked as management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group where he worked with marketing strategies for companies in the life science and industrial biotech area. Lars gained his PhD from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg working with transgenic mice models in the lab of Dr Mathias Treier. He subsequently worked as a postdoc at EMBL in Heidelberg and at the Biotech Research and Innovation Center (BRIC) in Copenhagen. In addition to his PhD Lars holds a Mphil in Bioscience Enterprise from Cambridge University and a Master of Biochemistry from the University of Copenhagen.