Work History
CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY - Bioinformatics Group, Cranfield Health
January 2006 - present. Position: Lecturer in Genetics and Computational Biology
I am course director for Cranfield Health's MSc in Applied Bioinformatics. I also teach extensively on the school's
other MSc courses, including our MSc in Clinical Research - a joint venture between Cranfield University and the Institute of Clinical
Research India. My involvement in this venture encompasses planning, teaching and liaison between
Indian and UK faculties - carried out on-site at both the UK and Indian campuses.
My current research activities include: further development of synthetic antigen prediction methods; in silico site-directed mutagenesis of antibody binding; de novo protein structure prediction; and investigation of the mechanism of anti-parallel cadherin homodimer-mediated cell adhesion.
Before moving to the Bioinformatics Group I was responsible for the day-to-day operations of molecular and cell biology laboratories within the Biomedical department. I am still developing in-house protocols for use with our new confocal microscope including fluorescent ICC protocols, metaphase FISH and observation of quantum dot conjugates.
LARCOMBE IT
April 2003 - January 2006. Position: Self Employed Sole trader / Owner
Contacts made through Virtua Biomedical resulted in the forming of Larcombe IT as a
consultancy business specialising in technical and medical database information
systems. The NewDrugFile (www.newdrugfile.co.uk) drug information database was
developed for principal client, Promedis UK Ltd. This subscription service is available
to the pharmaceutical industry, and directly to the NHS via the internal New Drugs
Online service provided by the UK Medicines Index. Work was also carried out on the
Medisis (www.medisis.com) drug information site, a partnership project between Virtual
Health Network Ltd and Pharmisis Ltd. Further technical solutions have been provided,
either under direct contract or sub-contract to Pfizer, Merck Sharpe & Dohme (Univadis - www.univadis.com), and
Schering Plough.
Although I have ended this as a business venture, I occasionally undertake small projects for my past clients in my spare time.
VIRTUA BIOMEDICAL CONSULTING Ltd
Jan 2002 - April 2003. Position: Director
Assuming the role of company director necessitated that I learn many of the diverse aspects of
running a business. From the legal aspects of a limited company, through payroll, budgeting and
accounts, to contracts, confidentiality, IP and financing. During the development of the company
I took sole responsibility for all of these facets, as well as primary responsibility for the
development of a technical research and development portfolio. To attempt the progression the
business I had to liaise with various local government bodies, other businesses and academic
institutions, whilst in the quest for financing I also had to deal with banking bodies, investment
funds and private individuals.
CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY - Cranfield Institute of Bioscience & Technology
Jun 2000 - Dec 2001. Position: Unix Systems Administrator & IT Support
During this employment I assumed various responsibilities within the Institute of Biosciences &
Technology and Cranfield Biomedical Centre. Though mainly involved with IT support, ensuring the
smooth operation of the computing and technology resources within these departments, I was
principle administrator and support provider for the department's Silicon Graphics workstations.
My specific scientific background prompted my secondment to the industrial contracts team to
contribute technical knowledge for the preparation of a report on scrapie prion detection for
DEFRA (project SE1764).
VIRTUA CONSULTING
Nov 2000 to Dec 2001. Position: Self Employed Sole Trader / Owner
Virtua Consulting was established as an IT consultancy and web design business. Run as a
part-time / hobby activity the arrangement allowed me to explore "real world" business processes,
whilst acting as a platform to exercise my IT skills for profit.
CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY - Cranfield Institute of Bioscience & Technology
Dec 1998 to Jun 2000. Position: Research Assistant
For this position I worked in Cranfield's BioInterface Research and Fabrication Facility as
part of a European-funded (framework 4 BRITE/EURAM) research project involving four other
partner organisations (BioDot, UK; IMM, Mainz; IMEC, Leuven; Innogenetics, Ghent). The project
was entitled: Development of an advanced, innovative processing technology for polymer
micro-sensor array diagnostic fabrication (BRPR980770). Atomic force microscopy was used to
analyse and evaluate the nanobiology and biophysical behaviour of DNA on electrochemical sensor
arrays.
CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY - Cranfield Health
Jan 2004 - Jan 2006. Degree: PhD
Project Title: Computational selection of protein surface peptides for application in diagnostic, therapeutic and vaccine development.
Computationally simple statistical algorithms were applied in a novel way for the prediction of
protein surface regions, resulting in a rapid and reliable technique to identify suitable antigenic
peptides. Such an approach has potential application to vaccine and diagnostic development, and was
used to produce a novel antibody for the development of an assay for chlamydial infection, an aspect
of the project that was funded by Northampton General Hospital.
Further development of the algorithm resulted in the provision of a web-based facility for protein analysis, which also incorporates a searchable database containing the 34,180 known human proteins from the NCBI repository for which I have determined potential epitopes. It is intended that the web interface and databases will be made publicly available after publication of the work.
QUEEN MARY & WESTFIELD COLLEGE (now QMUL), University of London
Sep 1995 to Jun 1998. Degree: BSc (Hons) 2:1 Genetics
Dissertation: The cytogenetics of Tobacco. Supervisor: Dr Andrew Leitch
In order to establish a better understanding of the parental ancestry of the modern tobacco plant,
fluorescent in situ hybridisation techniques were employed to map repetitive DNA sequences to
specific chromosomes. Comparison of the sequence locations in the modern plant and the suspected
progenitor varieties provided further clues as to the nature of the hybridisation event which
must have occurred.