Next Lunch and Learn: Part of the Enterprising Women Programme

Come and hear from enterprising and successful women scientists and network over lunch!
Dr. Melanie Ghoul (Zoology): Building a path to entrepreneurship
Dr. Holly Reeve (Chemistry): The importance of challenging yourself

Both speakers will share their journey from undergraduates through to becoming entrepreneurial researchers covering their successes, challenges and vision for the future, including what they hope to do with their entrepreneurial activities.
Lunch provided and networking time included.

When? Tuesday 29th October, from 12-2pm
Where? Chemistry Teaching Lab

Biographies:
Melanie is a Junior research fellow at Worcester college and a postdoc in evolutionary microbiology at the Zoology dept at the university of Oxford. Her work is focused on using computational and experimental techniques to study the problems with antibiotic resistance and tolerance in clinical pathogens. Melanie is an aspiring entrepreneur and this led her to explore the enterprise world. She has so far scientifically advised for colleagues’ start-up/spinoff companies, advised industry on problems such as the antibiotic resistance problem, engaged in internships with startups, and participated in courses such as the Ideas 2 impact course for entrepreneurship at the Said Business School. She has also applied for several entrepreneurial grant schemes and has an ambition to slowly but surely be an active entrepreneur that can apply her own academic work.

Holly completed her MChem at the University of Oxford with her Master’s project focusing on exploiting enzyme catalysis on electrically conducting particles in the group of Prof. Vincent. Her results were used for a patent submission in the area of cofactor regeneration for chemical synthesis in 2011, which inspired her to continue this research as a DPhil project. During her DPhil, Holly completed a number of business and entrepreneurship courses, including Science Innovation Plus at the Saïd Business School. Holly is the Project Manager of HydRegen, an early stage technology underdevelopment in the Chemistry Department aiming to provide cleaner routes to valuable chemicals. She is responsible for leading this research effort and ensuring developments are industrially relevant by regularly meeting with the project’s Industrial Advisory Board, and industrial and academic project partners. In the future, Holly hopes to be involved with implementing the HydRegen technology in industry.