Astbury Innovation Lead Adam Nelson is Professor of Chemical Biology, and co-lead of the Health theme Structure & Function in BioMedicine sub-theme, at the University of Leeds.
His research interests focus on the application of synthetic organic chemistry to the solution of biological problems. His group is currently exploiting small molecule libraries of exceptional scaffold diversity in the discovery of small molecular modulators of protein-protein interactions.

Predicting and Preventing Protein Aggregation theme lead David Brockwell obtained his BSc in Pharmacy from the University of Manchester in 1992 and registered as a Pharmacist after a qualification year at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London in 1993. He then returned to Manchester and obtained his PhD in 1997. After six years post-doctoral work in the School of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Leeds, he was appointed to the academic staff of the same department jointly as part of the EPSRC funded Doctoral Training Centre and the newly created Institute of Molecular Biophysics. His research areas include Single Molecule Mechanical Unfolding of Proteins and their Complexes.

Translational Drug Discovery theme lead Richard Foster obtained his PhD at the University of Leeds. He then worked for Tripos for nine years, ultimately as Medicinal Chemistry Group Leader, before returning to the University of Leeds to join the newly established Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology Technology Group as Group Leader. His research interests lie in the design, synthesis and optimisation of small molecules for therapeutic application or their use in the elucidation of biological function.

Ion Channels Research theme lead Stephen Muench received his BSc and PhD from the University of Sheffield. Following post-doc appointments at the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds he joined the University of Leeds in 2010 as an MRC Career Development Fellow. His research is principally concerned with the structure, mechanism and regulation of large protein complexes, in particular membrane proteins. This is achieved by combining Electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography, molecular dynamic simulations and a range of biochemical techniques.

Targeted Molecular Delivery theme lead Bruce Turnbull received a first class BSc (Hons) degree in chemistry from the University of St Andrews, where he later completed his PhD in biological carbohydrate chemistry working with Professor Rob Field. His research interests lie at the interface of carbohydrate chemistry and glycobiology, in particular, in cell surface protein-carbohydrate interactions.

Protein-Protein Interactions theme lead Andy Wilson is Deputy Director of the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology at the University of Leeds and the co-director of PPI-Net. He joined The University as a Research Lecturer in January 2004 and is currently Professor of Organic Chemistry. Andy’s research group are interested in using synthetic molecules to understand and control molecular recognition and self-assembly. The group’s multidisciplinary approach is applied to problems in Chemical Biology and Materials Science.

Kate Langton is the Astbury Research and Innovation Manager at the University of Leeds. She obtained her BSc in Medicinal Chemistry and PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry from Leeds. Before starting her role as Research and Innovation Manager she worked as Senior Scientist and then Product Manager for a company making scientific software that supports the drug development process.