Meet The Team

David is the Founder & CEO at CyanoCapture.

Uma has over a decade of experience with working on microalgae for industrial-scale applications, having formerly led a large scale-up project with Reliance Industries in India to convert microalgae into biofuels and alternative proteins for food/feed. Having completed his PhD at Texas A&M University on Plant Pathology & Microbiology, Uma has an extensive background in genetic engineering and cellular physiology of photosynthetic and heterotrophic microbes. As CSO, Uma leads the Molecular Biology sub-team on developing our pipeline of engineered strains for enhanced CO2 fixation and high value compounds production. Uma plays a pivotal role managing grant-funded academic collaborations as well as important company-level technical decision making.

Dr Stuart Reid (CTO) is the former VP of Development at Oxford Nanopore where he joined in 2006 and saw its growth from 8 to 1000+ employees and over a 17 year career scaled the company to IPO. Stu is a co-inventor on many of the breakthroughs that became critical to Nanopore's success. Stu has a DPhil in Biophysics and a MPhys in Physics from Oxford.

Da is a molecular biologist at CyanoCapture. Trained as an immunologist with a DPhil from University of Oxford, he has a track record of wandering into new fields following his curiosity. This led to co-founding two synthetic biology startups: one as a University of Oxford spinout focused on DNA assembly technology, and another developing novel epigenetic assays for ageing and cancer diagnosis. Da has extensive experience in genetic engineering in bacteria and mammalian cells. At CyanoCapture, he is working on streamlining the process for chassis engineering. In his spare time he enjoys sailing and robotics.

Sarah is developing recombinant protein expression methodologies at CyanoCapture. She joined us from Evotec, where she was a Principal Scientist implementing recombinant protein production strategies for a multitude of drug discovery pipelines. Prior to this, as a postdoc at the University of Oxford she developed a structurally engineered vaccine antigen for prophylaxis against meningococcal disease (due to enter Phase I later this year), and was an EMBO fellow working on protein-RNA structural studies at the University of Aarhus. Her PhD with Neil Hunter FRS focused on Cyanobacteria, where she identified and characterised the missing component in the enzyme that converts chlorophyll from red to green. Sarah brings to to CyanoCapture her love of genetic engineering (she invented the concept of “self-flavouring yoghurt”, through engineering lactobacillus to produce vanillin when competing in iGEM2007), enthusiasm for working with Cyanobacteria and deep knowledge of recombinant protein production.

Jose was a postdoctoral scientist at the Lea-Smith lab (UEA) and at the University of Cordoba where he worked on the genetic engineering of cyanobacteria and development of new tools. At CyanoCapture Jose is responsible for strain engineering as well as bringing in novel ideas from external collaborators and supervising new junior scientists.

Clemency is a High Throughput Assay Scientist. She has previously worked as an Organism Engineer at Ginkgo Bioworks. Clemency studied at Biochemistry at Birmingham University before doing a PhD sponsored by Mitsubishi at Nottingham University where she worked on metabolically engineering E coli to synthesise methyl methacrylate.

Amrit studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge before joining CyanoCapture as a Molecular Biologist where he is responsible for developing novel strains capable of converting CO2 into valuable recombinant protein products.

Jane completed her BSc at Glasgow before doing an MSc in Biotechnology at Imperial and joined CyanoCapture as a Research Scientist in February 2022. Jane has worked on major external collaborative projects including H2Boost and COSEC (Horizon Europe).

Andrew leads R&D Engineering at CyanoCapture, where he applies his mechatronics expertise in automation and signal processing to develop scalable bioproduction systems. He holds a Master’s in Biomedical Engineering from Imperial College London and an Acoustical Engineering degree from the University of Southampton's ISVR, where he was a scholarship recipient. Before joining CyanoCapture, Andrew worked on bioprocess development for cultivated meat, refining scalable solutions for cellular agriculture. Now, he focuses on engineering efficient systems to produce high-value metabolic products from cyanobacteria—bridging the gap between lab-scale innovation and industrial scalability.

Kiran studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge before joining CyanoCapture first as an intern before being quickly promoted into his role as Strategy Analyst. Kiran is responsible for building from scratch new iterations of technoeconomic modelling for sophisticated commercial scale bioprocesses which has from the earliest days underpinned the critical decision making process at CyanoCapture.

Derin Alemli, CFA is an experienced startup business executive with 20 years of experience. He most recently served as Simulate’s CFO where he also oversaw sales, and before that as the COO/CFO at New Age Eats in cultivated meat. He previously founded two smaller ventures in audiology and retail food tech. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Derin worked in hedge fund portfolio analysis at Grosvenor Capital Management for six years.

Pri joined CyanoCapture in 2024 having formerly worked as the Senior Finance Director at GlaxoSmithKline for 14 years. During this time she held several Finance roles of increasing seniority including overseeing dozens of R&D collaborations between GSK and Biotech companies with projects ranging from early research to late stage development. Her last role was as CFO of Genomic Sciences, a team of 300+FTEs and £150m in annual spend across two continents. Pri works on Business Development with a focus on Europe and Asia. She enjoys singing in the local choir and sees it as an analogy for life!

Max was a postdoctoral scientist at the Church lab (Wyss Institute, Harvard) where he worked on cyanobacteria strain domestication, discovery of novel fast-growing strains including UTEX 3222 and developing novel genetic tools for engineering cyanobacteria for industrial applications. Max formerly worked at the Grantham Foundation and is now one of the early team members of Pioneer Labs.

Harrison received BSc (Physics/Math) and BEng (Mechanical Engineering) degrees from the University of Sydney and went on to complete a D.Phil at the University of Oxford as a Monash Scholar. After Postdoctoral research at Oxford he joined the Department of Engineering Science in 2020 as an Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow at Harris Manchester College.