management team

Dr Andrew Rickman: Non Executive Chairman
Sean Sutcliffe: Chief Executive Officer
Dr Edward Green: Founder and Chief Technical Officer
Kristan Wadrop: Chief Operating Officer
Fergal O'Brien: Vice President Commercial Operations
Christina Sweeney: Financial Controller & Company Secretary

Dr Andrew Rickman (Non Executive Chairman)

Andrew is the Chairman of GBL. He was founder and CEO of Bookham Inc, (now Oclaro) the world's largest producer of telecoms fibre optic communication components and sub-systems and brings to GBL extensive experience of growing a global technology business. Andrew has a Mechanical Engineering Degree from Imperial College London, a PhD in Photonics from Surrey University and an MBA from Cranfield University, as well as honorary doctorates from Surrey and Kingston Universities. Andrew holds positions with the East Asia Institute of the University of Cambridge and Applied Science advisory boards. He was awarded an OBE in the Queen's Millennium Honours list for services to the telecommunications industry and is a winner of the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Silver medal for his outstanding contribution to British engineering.

Sean Sutcliffe

Sean Sutcliffe has been Chief Executive of Green Biologics since April 2008, contributing to the company extensive commercial and operational experience across the energy and renewables sector. Prior to joining Green Biologics he was from 2005 Chief Executive of Biofuels Corporation, a UK based biodiesel producer, and from 2007 Chairman of Tidal Generation Limited, a developer of tidal stream devices. Previously Sean worked for BG Group plc for 14 years in a variety of roles spanning operations, business development and strategy, most recently as Executive Vice President with responsibility for Corporate Development and New Businesses. Sean is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with an Engineering degree from Cambridge University and is a Non Executive Director of You Broadband, an Indian ISP, and a trustee of Practical Action, an international development charity.

Dr Edward Green (Founder and Chief Technical Officer)

Edward gained a Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) in 1993. Edward spent five years in academia at Rice University, Texas, US and at Gothenburg University, Sweden developing novel microbes for biofuels and chemicals. In 1998, he joined Agrol Ltd., a UK start up where he established a multi-disciplinary team that developed a high temperature ethanol process. In 2003 he founded GBL. Edward's efforts were recognised in the inaugural Woods Enterprise Awards for Entrepreneurship. Edward has delivered technical improvements in microbial fermentation processes for biofuel production over the past 17 years contributing to numerous scientific publications and patents.

Kristan Wadrop (Chief Operating Officer)

Kris graduated from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1994 with an honours degree in Chemical and Process Engineering. The majority of his career has been with ICI plc where he worked in the petrochemical industry on Teesside, Western Europe and the Far East. Kris has also worked in the USA as a Plant and Commissioning Manager for ICI Americas. Kris joined us from Vireol plc, a first generation bioethanol company, where he was the Project, Technical and Operations Manager leading the project and technical development within the company to deliver two of the first world scale bioethanol plants in the UK. Kris developed Vireol's strategy to address the carbon saving limitations associated with first generation bioethanol technology.

Fergal O'Brien (Vice President Commercial Operations)

Fergal is a Biochemist with 25 years experience in the Biotechnology/ Fine Chemical Industry. He has held positions in R&D, operations, business development and senior management for a number of UK based companies including Celltech, Enzymatix, Chiroscience, Chirotech and Dow Pharmaceuticals; he was CEO of Warwick Effect Polymers Ltd from 2004-6. Fergal joins GBL from his own Business Development Consultancy where he focussed on assisting SME's with developing their business strategy. Fergal brings extensive experience in managing technical programmes and commercialising novel technologies and across the biotechnology sector.

Christina Sweeney (Financial Controller & Company Secretary)

Christina has a Masters in Finance degree from London Business School and a B.Sc. from Cornell University in Applied Economics. She has managed finances for several early stage technology companies creating cost effective organisations. Christina spent five years with investment banks UBS Dillon Reed and JP Morgan working in Operations and Finance including analysing financial implications of new business development, running a project to limit settlement risk within the bank and streamlining European cash accounts. Christina brings experience in finance management together with strong project management skills.

Technical Advisory Board

Professor David Jones: Scientific Advisor
Professor Zhihao Sun: Scientific Advisor
Dr Tim Davies: Non Executive Director
Alan Keasey: Scientific Advisor
Dr Martin Comberbach: Bioprocess Consultant
Robert Rickman: Feedstock Advisor
Steve Vaux: Feedstock Advisor

Professor David Jones (Scientific Advisor)

David obtained a Ph.D. in microbiology from Rhodes University and held academic positions at a number of universities in South Africa before moving to New Zealand in 1989. He was Professor and Head of Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Dean of the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Otago before retiring in 2007. His major focus of research has been on improvement of industrial solvent-producing clostridia where he gained hands-on experience on the Acetone, Butanol, Ethanol (ABE) fermentation process in South Africa.

In New Zealand his research included the molecular taxonomy and characterization of the solvent-producing clostridia, comparative genomics and studies on phage infections. David is a world leading expert on solventogenic Clostridia and their industrial application for the production of acetone, butanol and ethanol (ABE).

Professor Zhihao Sun (Scientific Advisor)

Zhihao Sun is a Professor at the School of Biotechnology and Principal Investigator at the Biocatalysis Laboratory, Jiangnan University, China. His research focuses on improvements to the continuous butanol fermentation and production of a variety of organic acids and fine chemicals by microbial transformation.

Prior to joining Jiangsu in 1986, Professor Sun worked as a Chief Engineer in the butanol fermentation industry (Sichuan, China) for twenty years. He is widely regarded as an expert on the butanol fermentation process and recently published two review articles detailing the history and recent progress on the butanol fermentation in China.

Dr Tim Davies (Non Executive Director)

Tim graduated in 1995 with a Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from UMIST. Tim has considerable experience in fermentation process optimization and protein purification. Tim spent three years in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Georgia (UGA). In 1998 he joined Aureozyme, a biotechnology company based at UGA that developed industrial hydrolytic enzymes. In 2001 Tim became the Director of the Bioexpression and Fermentation (BFF) contract facility at UGA and currently manages a team of scientists and technicians with a budget of over $500,000 per year. Tim is also a founder and partner in Downstream Biotech Consulting Inc.

Alan Keasey (Scientific Advisor)

Alan graduated from Sheffield University in 1977 with a PhD in chemistry before joining BP Chemicals Research Department. Over a 27 year career, Alan progressed from research and technical service (mainly solvents and fuels) into a business role covering at various times, speciality polymers and bulk chemicals. In 1997, Alan returned to technology as a Research Manager prior to moving to Trinidad with BP to look after their world scale methanol facilities as CEO and Chairman of Titan Methanol and then the BP Commercial Director responsible for Atlas Methanol and various Gas-to-Chemicals projects.

Over the last years, Alan has been active in the renewables sector, particularly biofuels, where he was Technical/Operations Director of Biofuels Corporation and is the Renewable Energy Association
representative on the BSI and CEN fuel standards committees.

In addition, Alan runs his own consultancy (Biofuels Technology) and is Secretary of the
Royal Society of Chemistry Management Committee.

Martin Comberbach (Bioprocess Consultant)

Martin has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry/Biochemical Engineering from University of Manchester UMIST. Martin is a biochemical engineer with over 25 years experience in R & D, bioprocess design, and project engineering. He has held Executive positions at GSK Biologicals, Metris Therapeutics Ltd. and more recently as Director of Global Manufacturing at GeneMedix Plc. He founded Comberbach Consulting Ltd. in April, 2005 and is based in Milton, Oxfordshire.

Martin provides help with scale up and demonstration of GBL's proprietary butanol fermentation process

Robert Rickman (Feedstock Advisor)

Robert graduated with an MA and MSc in Agriculture and Forestry from Oxford University. He is a non-executive director of Cambium Global Timber Fund Ltd, the AIM quoted forestry owning company. He has been a director of CSC LLC, a private sawmilling company in Washington State, USA and a number of public and private forestry companies. Previously he was director of Forestry Investment Management Limited and responsible for the business management of 50,000 ha of plantation forests in the UK and 17,000 ha in New Zealand. He is also a partner in Conduit Rockley managing investments in China.

Steve Vaux (Feedstock Advisor)

Steve has been involved for over 25 years in the identification, planning, development and management of a variety of large integrated agricultural and food businesses. Following extensive involvement in palm oil, he spent over a decade seconded as a senior manager to two successful public companies establishing and growing sugar cane for sugar and ethanol production on a large scale, with Booker Tate Limited part of the Remgro Group.