Choracle people

David Melvin started his career in software engineering and computational aspects of chemistry in 1989. He received a PhD from the University of Aberdeen for his work on statistical pattern recognition and the development of hybrid, artificial intelligence architectures. Since then he has been actively engaged in advanced R&D software projects in both industry and academia. He as held leading roles as CTO and head of development in two world class Cambridge start-up companies. He has providing technical and team leadership skills as well as direct VC fund raising experience. As well as providing managerial input to Choracle he is developing software for the Wellcome Trust, Sanger Institute.

Following an Honours degree and Part III in Mathematics, Antranig Basman received his PhD in Information Engineering from the University of Cambridge, for work in Bayesian statistical inference in image analysis. Since then he has held leading software development positions in world-class companies, most recently at Amedis Pharmaceuticals where he was responsible for both development and delivery of ADME/QSAR models to international clients. Antranig has wide-ranging experience in the software industry in diverse areas such as cryptography, distributed programming and artificial intelligence, and has been programming in the C++ and Java languages for most of their lives.

After a PhD at Warwick and Postdoc at Stanford, California, William held a lectureship at University of Bath, researching inter alia genomics and bioinformatics technologies and what is now called 'functional genomics'. In 1988 he joined a technology consultancy, developing new life-science based technologies such as sequencing by hybridization (which he co-invented), and evaluating new technology opportunities in biotech. and pharmaceuticals. In October 1996 he joined Merlin Ventures, a specialist 'biotech' venture investment group, to head the science team In 1999 William founded Amedis Pharmaceuticals Ltd., around technologies for the computational prediction of ADME properties of molecules and the use of silicon in drug discovery.

William's expertise has been recognised with Toshiba Year of Invention prize in 1992, election to Human Genome Organisation in 1994, and appointment as a visiting Professor at Imperial College, London in 1999. He is author of numerous papers, patents, and three books.