Jussi Westergren, Chairman
Jussi is a theoretical physicist who began his academic career at McGill University,
Montreal before moving to the University of Helsinki and more recently,
the University of Oxford. His enduring scientific interests lie in the fields of simulation
of complex systems, distributed computing and molecular physics.
Dr Paul Finn, Chief Executive Officer
Paul completed his undergraduate degree at St Peter's College Oxford and his
biochemistry Ph.D at the University of Manchester. Between 1985 and 1990 he worked as
a scientist in the computational chemistry group at SmithKline Beecham, where he
focused on the discovery of novl anti-biotic agents. In 1990 he moved to Pfizer's
computational chemistry group where he was responsible for developing Pfizer's in-house approach
to virtual screening.
In 1998, Paul joined Prolifix, a UK biotechnology company which was acquired in 2002 by
TopoTarget, a listed drug development company focused on oncology. Following this acquisition
Paul became group director of R&D and was responsible for TopoTarget's extremely successful HDAC
inhibitor programme (now in multiple phase II trials).
John Davies, Chief Financial Officer
John read law at the University of Oxford and went on to complete a masters degree
at McGill University. He returned to the UK in 1996 and trained as a chartered accountant
in London with Robson Rhodes. In 1999 he became finance director of IndexIT Partnership Ltd,
a technology advisory boutique, which was acquired in 2000 for £36 million by Beeson Gregory
Group plc, an investment bank. At Beeson Gregory he worked in the bank's private equity team,
which specialised in financing early stage technology companies.
Between 2001 and 2005, John was CFO of IP2IP0 Group plc, the UK's leading intellectual
property commercialization company. During his tenure, IP2IPO raised three private rounds
of finance, listed on the AIM market raising £30 million and grew 10 times its original
value to £250 million. John was integral to most of the company's major activities, including the
structuring of its long term partnerships with UK universities, the formation of spin out companies
from these partnerships and the group's acquisitions.
Professor W. G Richards, non-executive director and founder
Professor
W. Graham Richards is one of the leading computational chemists in the UK, with
over 300 publications to his name, he has served as chairman of the Department of Chemistry
at Oxford University since 1997. He is head of the centre for computational drug discovery at
Oxford.
Throughout his career, Professor Richards has been involved in the commercialisation of technologies.
In 1989, he co-founded Oxford Molecular Ltd, which later floated on the London Stock Exchange as
Oxford Molecular Group plc. In 2001, he founded InhibOx Ltd. He is a director of ISIS Innovation
Ltd, the University of Oxford's technology transfer company and was involved for several years with
the Wellcome Trust in a similar capacity. He is a main board director (formerly chairman) of
IP2IPO Group plc, the listed intellectual property commercialization company.
Dr Barry Porter, non-executive director
Barry has over twenty years of drug discovery experience working in the pharmaceutical industry.
He is chief executive of ReOx, a biotechnology spin out from the University of Oxford, a non-executive director of Curidium and recently director and senior
vice president drug discovery at De Novo pharmaceuticals. Prior to that Barry held senior positions
at Pharmagene(vice president 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.
