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Our team
“Weatherden is a team of leaders who combine an agile biotech mindset with the proven expertise of pharmaceutical drug discovery and development.”
Leadership
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Professor Houman Ashrafian
MA BM Bch DPhil FRCP
CO-FOUNDER & CHAIRMAN
Professor Ashrafian is a clinician scientist, serial entrepreneur, investor and company builder. He has received dozens of awards and authored over 70 publications.
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Dr Duncan McHale
MBBS PhD MRCP MFPM
CO-FOUNDER
Duncan is a clinical geneticist and early drug development expert. He has over 30 years of industry experience, sits on multiple MRC panels and authored the ICH E15 and E16 guidelines.
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Emma Tinsley
MSci ACA
CHIEF EXECUTIVE
Emma is a nationally recognised serial entrepreneur who has built multiple companies with breakthrough therapies and is bringing to market deep tech solutions that will transform clinical trial design efficiency.
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Dr Victoria Simpkin
MSc MBChB MRCP
CHIEF BUSINESS OFFICER AND DRUG DEVELOPMENT CLINICIAN
Victoria is a clinician with extensive experience in R&D strategy, clinical development, medical affairs and commercial operations in large and mid-sized companies.
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Bryony Harraway
SVP FINANCE AND OPERATIONS
Bryony is an R&D and biotech company creation executive with extensive experience of forecasting, company fundraising, investor management, and post-investment scaling of early stage biotechs and pre/seed.
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Andrea Sotak
Head of Strategy and SVP Corporate Development
Andrea is an exemplary strategy executive, life sciences investor and business operations leader with a deep understanding of the challenges facing investors, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies across global markets.
Core team
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Dr Kirsty Wydenbach BSc MBBS MSc FRCA MFPM
Head of Regulatory Strategy & Drug Development Cliician
Kirsty is a clinician and expert medical assessor with extensive experience of regulation in clinical trials and more than a decade’s experience at the MHRA.
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Professor Dominique Baeten MD PhD
Senior Drug Development Clinician
Dominique is a physician scientist and university professor with extensive hands-on experience of strategic drug hunting and drug development in pharma and academia.
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Geoff Brooks BSc
Head of Clinical Operations
Geoff has worked at a senior level on trials Phases I to IV on a variety of international projects involving therapeutic agents ranging from small molecules to gene therapy, and is highly regarded for his success in leading R&D teams.
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Dr Arash Yavari BSc MBBS DPhil MRCP MFPM
Senior Drug Development Clinician
Arash is a clinician scientist with broad experience in drug development, including target discovery, early phase clinical trial design, Mendelian/rare disorders, oligonucleotide therapeutics, CV, oncology, drug repositioning and novel platform/precision medicine approaches.
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Dr Raj Dattani BSc BM BCh DPM MFPM
Senior Drug Development Clinician
Raj is a company creation executive and commercial and technical due diligence professional who brings extensive experience of asset and unmet need analyses, competitor therapy area pipeline investigations, and indication selection therapeutic area mapping.
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Dr Jagtar Singh Nijjar BSc MBChB PhD MRCP
Senior Drug Development Clinician
Jagtaris a physician scientist with a decade of clinical expertise in rheumatology and experience in translational medicine, developing innovative end-to-end clinical plans and influencing translational biology plans using deep disease expertise and biomarker-rich approaches.
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Dr Michael Grant MB BCh BAO BSc MSc PGCert DPM FHEA MFPM MRCP
Senior Drug Development Clinician
Michael is a physician-scientist and oncologist with extensive experience of translational medicine and conducting trials from FIH to PIII, including for compounds with Breakthrough Therapy and Innovate Licensing and Access Pathway designations.
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Dr Simon Hutchings MPharmacol PhD
Senior Clinical Pharmacologist
Simon is an expert in pre-clinical and clinical pharmacology who has advised, designed, managed and delivered multiple FIH and POC studies across many therapeutic areas, including oncology, inflammation and infectious diseases.
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Dr Harriet Holme MA MBBS MRCPCH PhD RNutr
Drug Development Clinician
Harriet is a paediatrician with expertise primarily in oncology. Her PhD investigated cancer drivers and synthetic lethality in osteosarcoma. She founded and chairs PCD Research, a medical research charity.
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Dr Margaret Jones MSc PhD
Senior Drug Development Statistician
Margaret is a leading statistician with more than 20 years' experience in industry. She brings extensive delivery experience of adaptive trial designs, biomarker strategies, globally harmonised approaches, and implementing industry data standards.
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Dr Mark De Rosch PhD FRAPS
Regulatory Expert
Mark is an experienced executive with 30+ years’ industry experience who brings in-depth knowledge of US, Europe, and Japanese drug development and regulatory requirements supporting MAAs, INDs, CTAs, Pediatric Study and Investigational Plans, Fast Track Designation, RMAT Designation, BTD, Accelerated Approval (US), Accelerated Assessment (EU), ODD, and Japan Sakigake Designation.
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Dr Juliet McColm MBBCh DPM MFPM
Regulatory Expert
Juliet is a pharmaceutical physician with over 25 years’ experience in clinical development and the regulatory aspects of clinical trials. A former medical assessor at the MHRA, Juliet brings deep knowledge across all phases of drug development, from first-in-human trials through to license application.
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Dr Mary McHale MBBS MRCP MFPM
Senior Safety and Pharmacovigilance Consultant
Mary is a highly experienced pharmacovigilance and patient safety expert with more than 25 years of experience across pharma. Formerly SVP, Head of Patient Safety at UCB Pharma, she occupied multiple senior positions at UCB across twelve years..
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Dr Ryan Lea BA BMBCh
Associate Consultant
Ryan is a clinician with experience across therapeutic areas including oncology and respiratory medicine. He gained his medical degree from the University of Oxford during which he gained experience in molecular medicine and undertook research in multiple myeloma.
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Dr Koki Nakamura MD PhD
Strategic Advisor
Koki is an is an experienced commercial executive and pharmaceutical physician with a track record of leading and managing business units as S/VP, supervising sales, marketing, and product communication in addition to launching new products and evaluating in-licensing opportunities.
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Dr Tim Bourne PhD
Early Drug Development Scientist
Tim is an experienced chief scientific officer with a track record of delivering on small molecule, biologics, and new chemical (NCE) project as well as successful biotech deals and partnerships.
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Dr Matthew Nour MA BM Bch PhD MRCPsych
Drug Development Clinician
Matthew is a prizewinning neuroscientist and doctor with a decade of research experience in functional neuroimaging, computational cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychopharmacology.
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Dr Hakim-Moulay Dehbi MSc MRes PhD
Drug Development Statistician
Hakim is a specialist in the design and analysis of clinical trials, providing critical input to creation, design and delivery of pioneering drug development programmes across all clinical trial phases, therapeutic and disease areas.
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Sneha Bajpai BSc
Strategy Director
Sneha is a health tech professional with more than 12 years’ experience of scaling tech-enabled approaches in healthcare across a range of platforms including AI, corporate strategy, and commercialisation in drug development.
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Dr Steven Robery BSc PhD
Strategy Director
Strategy and business development executive, Steven has led multiple therapeutic landscape assessments across clinical and commercial stage assets, using the inputs to support business development and support R&D strategy.
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Dr Freddie Peakman MBiochem PhD
Strategy Consultant
Freddie is a UCL and Francis Crick oncology PhD and former grants adviser in infection and immunobiology at the Wellcome Trust working across clinical development, strategy and business development.
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Alex Girling BSc
Strategy Analyst
Alex has a BSc Hons in Biomedical Sciences from The University of Edinburgh, where he focused on Bioinformatics, Biomedical data science, Global Health, Genomics, Immunology, and Pharmacology.
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Debbie Macaro BSc
Clinical Operations Director
Debbie is a highly experienced clinical operations director with extensive expertise across the full life cycle of clinical trials management, including paediatric and pilot studies.
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Eulene Gooden BSc MSc
Clinical Operations Project Manager
Eulene is a clinical research professional with more than thirty years’ experience of clinical operations, and fifteen years managing Phase I-IV clinical trials Worldwide and Europe in particular.
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Luca Landucci BSc BA
Clinical Operations Project Manager
Luca is a multilingual study manager and full clinical trial lifecycle management professional with more than 18 years’ experience of setting up and managing single and multi-centre studies across all phases (including PIP and observational studies), patient populations, centres, geographical locations and a broad range of therapeutic areas.
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Jeremy O'Sullivan BSc MICR
Clinical Operations Project Manager
Jeremy has over 20 years’ experience in pharma and brings an impressive record in planning, setting up, coordinating, managing and overseeing every aspect of early phase clinical trials both nationally and globally.
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Harjit Singh BSc
Clinical Operations Director
Harj has a significant track record of designing, managing and leading international and multi-centre studies through all phases; setting up clinical development teams; developing study protocols; and devising clinical development plans and study timelines.
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Dr Zuhair Elgaid BSc PhD
Drug Development Analyst
Zuhair was a BBSRC scholar at UCL’s Drug Discovery Lab, where he recently completed his PhD. He specialises in computational, biophysical and cell biology methods in immune-oncology and brings expertise in experimental pharmacology and genetic, cellular and molecular biology.
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Katie Lui MSci
Drug Development Analyst
Pharmacology graduate knowledgeable in bioinformatics approaches, Katie has researched in multiple therapeutic areas including neuroscience, cardiovascular, and inflammation, and has previous operational experience working in a biomanufacturing and medical diagnostics company.
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Dr Laurel Woodridge BSc MSc PhD
Drug Development Analyst
Laurel has a PhD in Bioinformatics and Biological sciences and MSc in Neuroscience. She has a specialist interest in implementing descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive models of patterns and molecular signatures in biomedical data, networks using disease module enrichment and advanced statistical and computational data analysis.
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Russell Joyce BA
Information Governance Consultant
Russell is a records management and information governance professional with extensive experience of selection, evaluation and implementation of archives and procedures, including metadata schema and digital preservation.
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Dr Neil Benson, BSc PhD
Pharmacologist
Neil is a research scientist with more than 20 years experience working in large pharmaceutical companies specialised in applied modelling and simulation, PKPD, and QSP.
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Dr Graham Scott BSc PhD MRPharmS
Clinical Pharmacologist
Graham is a pharmacist and clinical pharmacologist of more than 30 years’ experience with extensive knowledge of translational science and significant track record of completing programs from candidate selection through FIH and PoC to submission and approval.
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Victoria Parry
Operations Director
Victoria is a project and product manager with extensive experience with SMEs in the banking sector, where she executed multiple complex projects in regulatory and compliance, feasibility, communications, and marketing.
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Caroline McHugh BSc
Events Manager
Caroline brings substantial experience of working internationally in the production of small- and large-scale events to budget and with finesse, incorporating summits, incentive programmes, sales kick-off meetings, scientific advisory boards, and leadership events.
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Armin Yavari BA MA MLitt
Finance and Operations Analyst
Armin is a charity trustee and trainee chartered governance professional. He co-headed an early career development initiative developed with the University of St Andrews and is a past fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Our track record
Client
satisfaction
An above average rate of repeat business and word-of-mouth driven new client relationships reflects the quality of our input and the outcomes we achieve.
Clinical
successes
With a track record of successful clinical trials in multiple cities and countries, our thoughtful design and integrated approach can chart your fastest path to efficacy in patients.
900+ years’
experience
Blending more than 900 years’ experience, we are uniquely positioned to de-risk your programs and maximise value across the drug development lifecycle.
International
reach
We can manage single and multi-centre trials across the world – our current portfolio involves 15 cities across 12 countries, including Brazil, France, New Zealand, Spain, the UK and USA.
Regulatory
wins
We have led multiple defence meetings with regulatory authorities, including the MHRA, FDA, EMA (including CHMP, SAG, COMP and PDCO), MEB, AEMPS, BfArM, and PEI.
Therapeutic
areas
Our expertise spans more than 30 therapeutic areas, which is augmented further by our network of KOLs.