SCI Formulation Forum 5th Annual Event: design through characterisation and analysis

Andrew Bayly is a Chemical Engineering Scientist with expertise in particle science and fluid dynamics, and a background in the development of formulated products and their processes. His passion is the development of scientific understanding that enables new products and processes to be designed and optimised faster and more efficiently.

Andrew is a colloid / soft matter scientist, with experience in co-optimising material formulation for in-process and end-product performance. The formulations often contain (nano)particles, polymers and / or surfactants and the key measurement technique is often rheology.
For the last 8 years, at Aqdot, a young company that originated in Cambridge University, Andrew has worked on developing applications for the novel macrocyclic chemical, cucurbiturils. "CBs" are extremely effective supramolecular “hosts” that non-covalently bind a wide range of chemical “guests”. Their breadth of application opportunities – and some formulation challenges – arise from the wide range of chemical moieties with which CBs interact.

Senior Principal Scientist at Johnson Matthey, 27 years working at main R&D site in South Oxfordshire.
Background in colloid science. Providing scientific & technical support to all of JM’s Businesses, with particular emphasis in particle size & shape, rheology, dispersion analysis, zeta potential.
Lead scientist in Formulation Science in JM.

Claire Wombwell is an experienced research scientist with a demonstrated history of working in the pharmaceutical industry. Since joining Veranova in August 2017, Claire has led multiple projects applying her expertise in solid state science to numerous active pharmaceutical ingredients. Her work at Veranova covers amorphous dispersion generation, polymorph screening, salt and cocrystal selection and crystallization development. Before joining Veranova, Claire worked with supercritical fluid technologies to improve the performance of medicines. Claire gained her PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of Cambridge (UK).

David Slade is a Lead Application Engineer in Applied Materials’ Pharma Team. His main role is to design, construct and deploy advanced analytics, modelling and predictive maintenance strategies enabling smart manufacturing within the formulated products industries.

I am currently part of GSK’s Method Innovation Team based in Stevenage UK with area of interest in in-silico modelling, quality by design (QbD) method development and the transfer of analytical methods and results between chromatography instruments. I have been awarded the GSK EMBRACE Rising 2022 Award and GSK Ahead Together/CEO Award 2022.

Dr Min Zhang works at National Formulation Centre, CPI, as a Principal Engineer. Min is a process engineer with a doctorate in pharmaceutical paste extrusion-spheronisation.  She has since worked in academia as a lecturer in pharmaceutical granulation research for solid oral dosage form. Min joined CPI in 2020 and leads client process development on the liquid mixing process scale-up, soft sensor development and process model predictive control.

Jessi joined Domino Printing 2019, where she began working in the Platform team, developing novel inks for future technologies. In 2020, she became a superuser for the department’s new automated formulation robot and worked on integrating the equipment into the department’s ink development process. She then joined the newly formed Automation team in 2021, working on the scoping and introduction of new tools and processes for Ink development. In 2023, Jessi joined the Shared Services Data and Process team, working to scope and introduce new tools to all R&D teams as part of Domino’s digitalisation journey. Her work still encompasses the automation of ink development, where she now leads the Automated formulation team, as well as scoping new technologies to achieve the 2030 closed-loop goal for routine ink development tasks.

Prof João Cabral is a physicist with a PhD in polymer science and engineering. He was a guest researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology before joining the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial, becoming full professor in 2018. He held visiting professorships at Fudan University, University of Chicago, and Instituto Superior Técnico. He currently holds a P&G/Royal Academy of Engineering research chair, and is an associate director of the Institute of Molecular Science and Engineering, and leads a research group of soft matter engineering, extensively employing microfluidics and scattering techniques to develop sustainable formulations and processes, from the molecular to the macroscales.

Mark Baker has over 20 years’ experience of developing and deploying automation capabilities to deliver a competitive market advantage. Based in the Materials Innovation Factory at the University of Liverpool, he leads a team in Unilever Homecare that supports global innovation across all Homecare product formats.

Snow Stolnik is Professor of Pharmaceutics at School of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham. She is PI and Director of EPSRC SFI Centre for Doctoral Training in Transformative Pharmaceutical Technologies. She is a recipient of the Royal Society Industrial Fellowship award and a holder of Lord Dearing award for postgraduate teaching.

Steven Brown develops NMR methods for the characterization of solid-state forms of pharmaceuticals, with co-authored publications with AstraZeneca, Daiichi Sankyo, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Pfizer. He is Director of the UK High-Field Solid-State NMR Facility that hosts the UK’s highest magnetic field NMR spectrometers (1 GHz, with 1.2 GHz on order).

Originally a Physical Chemist, Sven holds the Bragg Centenary Chair in Engineering Applications of Synchrotron Radiation at UoL. He seeks to create a fundamental science base driving disruptive solutions to industrial and societal challenges. He specialises in using advanced X-ray analysis to link structure at molecular and mesoscopic scales to macroscopically observable performance.