The team
board
Dek Woolfson
CSO
Andy Boyce
CEO
Jon Craton
Chair
Jon Craton
​
Jon brings to the business over 30 years of experience covering a variety of software and hardware industries. His technical background, combined with extensive experience of sales, marketing and general management, allows him to make a substantial contribution to Rosa’s success. In 1996 Jon co-founded Cramer and was CEO of the business for 6 years, leading the company through two stages of VC financing that raised over $27 million of capital for the business. Thereafter he was a senior executive with the company until its sale to Amdocs in 2006 for $425m in cash. Since then Jon has been a founding or early stage investor in a variety of start-ups - including Creo Medical (surgical technology), SwiftKey (artificial intelligence) and Zynstra (cloud computing).
Prof. Dek Woolfson
​
World leader in protein design with extensive track record of commercial partnerships. In 2011 and 2014 Dek’s group published landmark papers in Nature Chemical Biology and Science describing a new protein structure, which they called alpha helical barrels. These have central channels that allow binding and fluorescence change upon binding by analytes or complex mixtures. This provides the basis for the barrel-array diagnostics and sensing (BADASS) technology that underpins Rosa Biotech’s activities. Dek is the founding Director of BrisSynBio – a £13 million Synthetic Biology Research Centre – and the Bristol BioDesign Institute at the University of Bristol. His work has been featured in Nature Chemistry (cover story), Nature Chemical Biology and Science. He is the recipient of multiple science awards from bodies including the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Laurence Ede
NED
Chris Jones
NED
University of Bristol
Bristol is one of the most popular and successful universities in the UK and was ranked within the top 5% of universities in the world in the QS World University Rankings 2019. The School of Chemistry is internationally recognised for the breadth, creativity and high quality of its research and was rated in the top four UK Chemistry Departments in the most recent Research Excellence Framework (RAE2014)
University
Observer
Laurence Ede
​
Laurence is the former Managing Director and co-owner of Tocris Bioscience, a specialist life science reagent business providing bioactive chemicals, peptides and antibodies to researchers worldwide. During his time with the business Laurence set-up and ran Tocris’ wholly owned US subsidiary and had overall responsibility for Tocris’ product development, marketing, sales and distribution activities. In 2006 Laurence led a $40m Management Buyout from the founder shareholders and subsequently oversaw the sale of Tocris to Techne Corporation in 2011 for $124m. Since leaving Tocris in 2013, Laurence has invested in and advised a number of of start-up and early stage businesses and is currently a Non Executive Director on the boards of Ubiquigent Limited and DeepMatter PLC. Laurence has a BSc in Chemistry from Reading University and an MBA from the University of Bath.
Prof. Chris Jones
​
Chris has over 30 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry and is currently a Director at the Centre for Therapeutic Innovation at the University of Bath.
From 2009-16, Chris led Global Pharmaceutical Development in AstraZeneca and was responsible for designing and developing new medicines from discovery through development to post launch optimisation. In this role, he led pharmaceutical scientists across the UK, US, Sweden, Germany, India & China, and was a member of the R&D and Commercial Operations Investment Committees. He earned his degree and PhD from the School of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, University of Bath, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Bath in 2015. He was recently appointed Honorary Professor. Chris is a member of the University of Bath Ventures Board and was until recently a Director of Alderley Park Ventures Ltd.
Dr Andy Boyce
​
Driven commercialisation expert who has been on the coalface of the biotech revolution in Bristol. Andy has: transformed multiple early-stage technologies into new science spin-outs; raised more than £2M of angel, VC and grant funding; built extensive contacts in target markets; and contributed to national innovation strategy for synthetic biology. He completed his PhD in cancer research from the Cancer Research UK Centre at the University of Birmingham and has worked for the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and Knowledge Transfer Network.
Rosa Biotech's board combines extensive experience of driving commercialisation of novel chemistries, pharmaceuticals, software and AI, and medical devices.
advisory group
We are supported by a network of advisors in key application areas for Rosa's technology.
Chris Hancock
Keith MacDonald
Harry Destecroix
Prof. Chris Hancock
​
Chris is the founder of Creo Medical with 20 years of experience in medical device development, including four years at Gyrus Group plc in his role as Senior Engineer.
He holds a personal Chair in the Medical Microwave Systems Research Group at Bangor University, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, a Chartered Physicist, Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, a Chartered Engineer and a Senior Member of the IEEE. Chris is a named inventor and lead author on over 300 patents/patent applications and journal publications and was made one of Maserati top 100 Innovators.
Keith MacDonald
As a founder and Chairman of the Unit DX incubator where Rosa Biotech's laboratories are based, Keith is at the heart of the scientific start-up ecosystem in the Bristol & Bath area. He was Chairman and major backer of Ziylo Ltd , the glucose sensing company sold to Novo Nordisk in 2018, which was one of the UK's most successful deals for a young scientific start-up. Currently he is an investor/mentor/director for a dozen other early-stage companies and actively supports our efforts on the journey to commercialization.
Dr Harry Destecroix
​
Harry is a driven entrepreneur who completed his PhD in Supramolecular Chemistry at the University of Bristol. He has an in-depth knowledge of this technology and the field of chemical carbohydrate sensing in general. His first company – the glucose sensing company, Ziylo – was sold to Novo Nordisk for a deal that could exceed $800M. As part of Ziylo's growth, he founded the Unit DX incubator to provide much needed lab space to science-led companies in Bristol.
awards
Winners - Launch Great West Ones to Watch award 2019
Winners - Royal Society of Chemistry Emerging Technologies Competition, Health 2019
