Personnel
Who we are
Professor Stephen T. Beckett
Managing Director
Graduated in physics from Durham University and obtained a D.Phil from the University of York, UK. He spent 8 years carrying out research into asbestosis at the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh, before joining Rowntrees in 1979. With this company and subsequently with Nestlé, he has been involved both in research and factory production. Up to his retirement from there in 2006, he was responsible for university and other outside collaborations. He is the author of numerous articles and patents as well as editing "Industrial Chocolate Manufacture and Use" (4th edition, 2009), and "Physico-Chemical Aspects of Food Processing" and writing "The Science of Chocolate", which was published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (second edition 2008). For over ten years he was chairman of the Leatherhead Food Research's Confectionery Forum. Currently he is a member of the BBSRC and EPSRC panels and chairman of the German Confectionery School in Solingen's Chocolate Technology Committee. In 2009 he was award the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry and became a visiting Professor in Physical Sciences at Hull University.
Professor Stephen Atkin
Medical Director
Stephen Atkin, the head of diabetes and endocrinology within the University of Hull's Postgraduate Medical Institute (PGMI), United Kingdom. After a BSc in biochemistry he trained in medicine at Newcastle University, subsequently became a MRC training fellow and completed a PhD at Liverpool University. He was appointed in October 2005 as HYMS Professor of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is based and leads the pharmaceutical and nutritional clinical trials teams for these studies at the Clinical Research Center based at the Michael White Diabetes Centre at Hull Royal Infirmary, UK. The laboratory focussing on molecular and a cellular research is based within the medical research unit at the University of Hull. Translational clinical trials for both the food and pharmaceutical industry are a major focus of the work undertaken and part of the overall research portfolio on the exine.
Dr Grahame Mackenzie
Technical Director
He is Reader in Bioorganic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Hull, Visiting Professor at the universities of University of Hokkaido, Japan (1989, Oct-Nov), Picardie Jules Verne (1992-2005), Artois (2005-2010) and Limoges (2006-2008) and co-founder of Sporomex Ltd. He obtained his PhD, under the direction of Professor Gordon Shaw at the University of Bradford in 1976. He was a SRC/University of Bradford Research Fellow, visiting investigator at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Research Institute in New York (1979) and CNRS Poste Rouge, Director of Research at the University of Lyon, France (1988-1989). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and RSC Chartered Chemist. He has published over 140 papers in the areas of nucleosides, nucleotides, heterocycles, carbohydrates and sporopollenin.
Dr Terry Corbitt
Director, Technology Transfer & Licensing
Terry graduated from Imperial College London with a BSc and PhD in Zoology. After 10 years carrying out insect physiology research at a government research laboratory he moved into technology transfer. Terry has broad experience in all aspects of technology transfer and has worked for a number of organizations during the last 14 years in intellectual property / contract management roles particularly related to healthcare technology.
Dr Alberto Diego-Taboada
Project Manager
He obtained his PhD (2004) relating the synthesis of marine organism metabolites at the University of Salamanca under the supervision of Prof. J. G. Urones, Dr. I. Sánchez Marcos and Dr. Pilar Basabe Barcala. As part of his postgraduate training he was a visiting researcher at the Universities of Nottingham and Hull. He has published in the area of synthesis of natural product chemistry.
