Our People

One of the founding members of the DDU, Ian leads teams of chemists working on Anti-Infectives Drug Discovery projects. He is an established medicinal chemist with experience across a number of projects, including co-leading (with Professor Read) the team that developed the DDU’s clinical candidate for malaria.

Kevin brings extensive experience of early phase drug discovery, lead optimisation project leadership and pre-clinical development gained from over 30 years in the pharmaceutical industry. Kevin’s team works closely with the medicinal chemists to deliver high quality candidate molecules for entry into formal pre-clinical development.

David joined the DDU in 2010 having spent 15 years in the biopharmaceutical industry. David’s team conducts assay development, small molecule screening and an extensive array of mechanism of action and other supporting biology assays to define and characterise small molecules.

Manu joined the DDU as a biologist in 2009. He heads the team that develop and run cell-based assays for the parasitology programmes in the DDU and has successfully built extensive screening cascades that have proven pivotal to rapidly identify new compounds with the best chance of demonstrating in vivo efficacy. As Portfolio Leader Manu leads a programme focused on delivering new pre-clinical candidates for visceral leishmaniasis and Chagas disease.

Catharine joined the DDU as Manger for the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research (WCAIR) in 2017. She has more than ten years’ experience in project management in areas of translational research, health informatics and research innovation. She is highly experienced in operational strategy and managing multi-centre consortium and multi-disciplinary projects.

Louise is a Chartered Management Accountant who manages finances across the DDU’s portfolio and evaluates overall financial performance.

Beatriz joined the University of Dundee in 2007. In the last twelve years, she has been involved in drug discovery projects for cryptosporidiosis and malaria, including the discovery of DDD498 (M5717) a multistage antimalarial currently in Phase I clinical trials.

Laura joined the DDU at the point of its inception in 2006, initially working as a medicinal chemist working on Human African Trypanosomiasis before changing focus to TB in 2013, becoming Portfolio Leader in 2019. Laura leads a team of scientists internally and as a part of external consortia to discover new series that inhibit TB and develop them towards pre-clinical drug candidates against TB.

Fabio is a highly experienced Computational Chemist having worked in pre-clinical drug discovery for nearly 25 years across a broad range of therapeutic areas and target classes. He joined the DDU in 2013, becoming Head of Computational Chemistry in 2019, leading a team of 10 scientists focused on delivering Molecular Modelling, Machine Learning and AI solutions to drug discovery projects.

Vincent joined the DDU in May 2021 as the Molecular Interaction Team Leader. Vincent is a structural biochemist specialised in high-throughput strategies and biophysical techniques. With a strong track in membrane proteins studies, detergent free methods and antimicrobial resistance, he brings a specialised expertise to the DDU.

Gary joined the DDU in January 2018 becoming Synthetic Methodologies Team Leader in 2019. The team is responsible for development of new synthetic methodology, flow chemistry, chemical route development, optimisation, scale up and chemistry automation. Prior to joining the DDU Gary worked as a medicinal chemist at Organon, chemistry scale up team leader at Schering-Plough and Merck and lead chemist developing new automation technologies at Cyclofluidic and NewPath Molecular.

Mike co-founded the DDU with a vision of translating world-class discovery science in both tropical diseases and innovative disease mechanisms. He is Regius Professor of Life Sciences and Associate Dean of Research Strategy at University of Dundee. He also serves as Deputy Chair on the Board of Governors of the Wellcome Trust. His continued advocacy and support for the DDU has been integral to its continued growth including the provision of new lab space and state of the art equipment in the Discovery Centre.

Alan is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and a world-renowned expert in the biochemistry of tropical diseases. He has served on numerous drug discovery and development advisory boards for the World Health Organisation / Research and Training in Tropical Disease (WHO/TDR), DNDi, MMV, MRC and other agencies. He is a Governor of the Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation embedded in GSK’s Diseases of the Developing World facility in Spain.