Derek has over 25 years’ experience in the life science industry in both scientific and corporate roles with first-hand experience of establishing new businesses. He became Chief Executive of BBT in 2010, leading the restructuring of the business in 2013 in order for BBT to focus on development and management of the campus. He has overseen considerable growth of existing and new tenants since that time and recently created Accelerate@Babraham to facilitate further business creation in the cluster.
Derek will be an excellent addition to the One Nucleus Board. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience in dealing with the challenges faced by the life science SMEs One Nucleus exists to help. We fully expect Derek to play a vital role as we continue the development of One Nucleus as the go to organisation for life sciences seeking to do business in or with the London – East of England corridor.
Commenting on his appointment Derek said: “Having been closely involved with One Nucleus since its creation, I very much look forward to working with the team to support their future objectives. These are challenging times for the sector and One Nucleus is extremely well placed to connect and champion the cluster to entrepreneurs, investors and policy makers in order to catalyse business creation and growth. I am delighted to have been asked to join the Board and look forward to bringing my experience to the Board, to support the team and assist One Nucleus members.”
Jon Green, Chair of One Nucleus commented: “Derek is a fabulous addition to the team. He has a deep understanding of the needs of One Nucleus members and the cluster. This deep knowledge together with his current interests, particularly as CEO of BBT but also his roles with Cambridge Enterprise, and RoCRE at Rothamsted Research make him an ideal Director for One Nucleus”.
About Derek
With over 25 years’ experience, Derek started his career as a medicinal chemist with Merck, then moved into business and corporate development at Chiroscience, (one of the UK first biotech companies which grew from 17 staff to a FTSE 100 company), successfully negotiating and managing several multi-million pound licensing agreements, (Bristol-Myers Squibb, Purdue Pharma, Mariushi) including being part of the team that licensed the UK’s first biotech product, Chirocaine.
In 2000, he co-founded his first company, BioWisdom, an IT/Drug discovery company. Derek was appointed COO at DanioLabs in 2002, a therapeutics company using zebrafish as a model organism for drug discovery, where he grew the company from 4 to 34 employees and raised around £10 million for VC backed companies, before selling DanioLabs to Vastox, (now Summit Plc), for £15 million in 2007.
He joined Babraham Bioscience Technologies Ltd (BBT) in 2008 as Chief Business Officer with responsibility for the knowledge exchange and commercialisation (KEC) of the Babraham Institute’s intellectual property portfolio. During that time he spun out Crescendo Biologics whose business is focussed around intellectual property from the Babraham Institute.
Derek has been a member of the BBT board since October 2008 and became CEO of BBT in 2010. Following restructuring of the business in 2013, BBT’s primary focus has been on the development and management of the campus, with KEC responsibilities returning to the Babraham Institute.
Derek has a 1st degree in Chemistry, a Master in Information Technology, and an MBA as the first cohort of the Cambridge University Judge Business School MBA programme, and is a Chartered Director. He is a non-executive director at RoCRE (Centre for Research & Enterprise) at Rothamsted Research, and One Nucleus. He also sits on the Cambridge University Enterprise Investment Committee.