The Directors of O2H, Sunil and Prashant have strong life sciences, technology and management backgrounds. They have experience in major pharmaceutical, biotechnology and consultancy companies. Further they have experience in building and growing businesses in turbulent times and other industries outside discovery based research.

Sunil Shah
Sunil Shah is the CEO and head of Business Development of O2H. He was recently Director of Business Development at Cambridge Biotechnology. He has consulted into a range of Cambridge based biotechnology companies via O2H and major pharmaceuticals (Pfizer, GSK, BASF) via the Life Sciences group of PA-Consulting. He is also a non-executive of a technology company he co-founded. He holds an MBA from Cambridge and a BSc in biochemistry and is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Prashant Shah
Prashant Shah is the COO and CFO of O2H. He has recently worked on a number of life science spin-outs for UCL BioMedica via O2H. At Accenture he worked for GSK and other sectors via the Strategy Group where he was awarded for thought leadership. He is also a non-executive of a technology company he co-founded. He holds an 1st class MPhil from Cambridge in Management, an MSc from Cranfield (worked on Human Genome project) and 1st class Engineering degree from Nottingham.

Sunil and Prashant co-founded (1999) and successfully ran one of the UK's best-known e-commerce businesses. This business gained venture (ETCapital.com), angel (e.g. Hermann Hauser) and corporate funding (Channel 5). The brand became the 13th most well known Internet brand in the UK (Campaign) following a national TV campaign. Sunil and Prashant continue to be involved with this company as non-executive directors.

Medicinal Chemistry Advisor - Professor David Horwell
Professor Horwell graduated from London University before undertaking his PhD in organic heterocyclic chemistry at Leicester University with Professor C W Rees, CBE, FRS. He then carried out post-doctoral research in Canada (National Research Council, Ottowa), Florida (Gainesville) and at Imperial College, London. This was followed by a research career in the pharmaceutical industry with Eli Lilly, Parke-David, Warner-Lambert and Pfizer. He has been a Visiting Professor at The University of East Anglia for over 10 years and accepted the appointment of Chair of Medicinal Chemistry in September 2001.


Computational Chemistry Associate, Dr Susan Boyd
Susan has worked in the computational chemistry or chemoinformatics departments of Pfizer (Sandwich), Celltech (Cambridge) & Scynexis (Ongar, Essex). Prior to that she worked with Molecular Simulations Inc (now Accelrys) as Product Specialist for their library design tools. An organic chemist by training, she has a wealth of experience in the application of chemoinformatics & molecular design tools to accelerate the drug discovery process, both for affinity prediction and for identification of potential ADMET issues.


Medicinal Chemistry  Advisor - Dr Kamala Vasu
Dr Kamala Vasu is Head of Medicinal Chemistry at the PERD (Pharmaceutical Education Research and Development) Institute in Ahmedabad India. She supervises a number of PhD students and is involved in a range of collaborative partnerships with Industry as well have having worked directly in Industry

Advisor - Professor William Bains
William is a scientist and entrepreneur. He has 15 years' experience in technology search, evaluation and implementation in life science companies, author of over 100 articles and 3 books. After an academic career in the UK and the USA, he joined PA Consulting Group in 1988, and Merlin Ventures as Head of Science in 1996. William founded Amedis Pharmaceuticals Ltd, developing new medicines from the application of organosilicon chemistry to drug discovery, and Delta G Ltd., a company exploring a 'systems biology' approach to diseases of energy metabolism. In 2003 he co-founded Choracle Ltd. to build software prediction of toxicity for medicine and chemicals development. William's expertise has been recognised with Toshiba Year of Invention prize in 1992, election to Human Genome Organisation in 1994, and appointment as a visiting Professor at Imperial College, London and a lecturer at Cambridge University.

Advisor - Bob Damms
Bob is a consultant with over 18 years experience in the pharmaceutical and emerging life science sector. Most recently, Bob was Head Of Technology for Merlin Biosciences Limited, one of Europe's leading investors in bioscience. Prior to joining Merlin, Bob managed the Healthcare and BioIndustry Skillgroup at PA Consulting Group. Bob previously worked in Formulation research for ICI (now AstraZeneca) pharmaceuticals where he worked in a team developing a variety of polymeric delivery systems for proteins and peptides. He received an MA from the University Of Cambridge. He holds several executive and non-executive positions, both in the UK and in continental Europe.

Advisor - Martin Rigby
Martin Rigby is the CEO of ET Capital joined the the Cambridge office of 3i in 1986 as a specialist investor in start-up and early stage technology businesses. In 1992 he founded ETCapital Limited. He has made investments in nearly forty technology businesses over the past 17 years. He sits on the boards of six QTP investees, including: Bango.net, CellFactors, Impak, Oi! Bagel, Force12 and WAX info and is a non-executive director of the Cascade Seed Fund. He read history for his first degree at New College, Oxford, and was a regular army officer for seven years before completing an MBA at Cranfield University.