Rhys Diggins and Jodie Ashford have started their Research Scientist roles at Entropix, bringing a wealth of skills that will advance our enzyme development and optimisation work.
Rhys joins us after completing his MSc in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (Distinction) at The University of Sheffield and achieving a First-Class degree in Biology from Swansea University. Rhys’ BSc research project into microRNA production following the fungal pathogen infection of greater wax moths attracted several academic accolades. He was awarded the Oxford University Press (OUP) Prize and The Royal Society of Biology Top Project Award along with the highest degree class.
Rhys brings a range of valuable bioinformatics, statistics, bioengineering and protein production skills to the team that will help accelerate Entropix enzyme development and optimisation projects.
Jodie was awarded a First-Class degree in Biology followed by an MSc with Distinction in Computer Science by Aston University. An expert in computational biology and machine learning, Jodie has recently completed a PhD in the prediction of biological properties from protein sequence data using machine learning techniques for which she has been featured in several academic papers.
Jodie is responsible for leading machine learning and computational development projects to analyse and predict enzyme function based on gene sequence data and Entropix Directed Evolution pipeline information.
Co-founder and CEO Dr Rob Rule said “Jodie and Rhys’ academic and applied backgrounds in molecular and computational biology, biotechnology and machine learning will be instrumental as the business advances the development of novel enzymes and our technology platform. We welcome them to a growing team of talented Research Scientists who are engineering new enzyme functions through directed evolution and computational biology”.