Meet The Team
Ashley Cooper, CEO
Ashley has over 35 years commercial experience spanning the animal health, veterinary/clinical diagnostic, food diagnostic, pharmaceutical and biotech/biomedical sectors in Europe and US. He has led the creation of 14 scientifically diverse academic spin out companies through numerous equity and debt funding rounds and license deals.
Prof. Irene Grant, CSO
Irene Grant is Professor of Microbiology and Food Safety, School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast. Her long-time research interest (since 1993) has been Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP), its heat resistance, presence in milk and dairy products, and development of methods for its accurate detection and enumeration in milk and faeces. Irene has published extensively on this subject and is recognised as an international authority on this potentially foodborne and zoonotic bacterium. In recent years, her focus has been on developing improved rapid detection methods for viable MAP and other slow-growing pathogenic Mycobacterium spp., including M. bovis, M. tuberculosis and M. leprae.
Elizabeth Dainty, CFO
Liz Dainty has over 20 years’ experience in the private and public sector. After qualifying with KPMG, she moved to TNT logistics (later Ceva Logistics) where she was Financial Accounting manager looking after fiscal and monthly reporting, tax, treasury and special projects. In 2013 she returned to KPMG where she worked in valuations, valuing companies for share issues and other purposes. Since 2016, Liz has worked with numerous start-up companies largely university spin outs, offering strategic business and financial advice and preparing them for investment and growth.
Dr. Chris Nicklin, CTO
Chris Nicklin has over 30 years of chemical process development and manufacturing experience with both blue chip and private equity backed SME organisations in the Pharmaceutical, Fine Chemical and Life Science sectors. His experience encompasses Process Development, Technology Transfer, Scale-up, Outsourced Manufacturing, and Global Supply Chain. He has supported all stages of the product development life cycle, from late stage research through to development, launch and commercial supply.
Dr. Brendan Gilbride, Research Scientist
Brendan Gilbride has an MSci in Biochemistry with Professional Studies (2017) and a PhD in Biological Sciences (2022) from Queen’s University Belfast. His PhD research included early-stage development of a novel M. tuberculosis LFT diagnostic.
Dr. Hannah Dane, Research Scientist
Hannah has a BSc in Microbiology with Professional studies (2019) and has just completed a PhD in Agri-Food and Land Use. Her PhD research topic was the development of novel detection methods for the suspected zoonotic pathogen Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP). The focus of this research was the development of more efficient culture-based detection methods to improve the growth rate of MAP in the laboratory. Isolation and characterisation of a novel bacteriophage was also carried out with the aim of utilising it for phage-based MAP detection methods.