You’re Invited to Cambridge’s Annual Science Day!

Dr Craig Grant is Veranova’s Vice President and General Manager in Cambridge, UK where he has responsibility for all operational and technical activities at the site. Craig has a Ph.D. in structural inorganic chemistry from the University of Edinburgh and has over 25 years’ experience in the health and pharmaceutical industry. He has worked across a range of service-based companies, including Cambridge Combinatorial, Exova and Solid Form Solutions, as well as pharma companies, such as Millennium.

In 2003, Craig co-founded Pharmorphix^® Ltd which was acquired by Sigma-Aldrich in 2006, later by Johnson Matthey in 2015 and is now part of Veranova, a standalone CDMO with a global footprint and particular expertise in the development and manufacture of highly potent and controlled substances.

Adam Patterson is an experienced research scientist with a demonstrated history of working in the pharmaceutical industry. Since joining Veranova in July 2016, Adam has both undertaken and led projects applying his expertise in solid state science to numerous active pharmaceutical ingredients. His work at Veranova covers polymorph screening, salt and cocrystal selection, and crystallization development. Adam leads Veranova’s efforts in Raman spectroscopy with expertise in Raman mapping of drug products and contributes to the running of the single crystal X-ray diffraction service, focusing on the structure solution of different solid forms of active pharmaceutical ingredients. Adam gained his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and an MChem from Durham University.

Neil Stevenson is an experienced CMC leader having spent 20 years working across Big Pharma and Biotechs. He has worked on projects throughout the drug development lifecycle, from candidate selection through to market. He is an independent CMC consultant with CMC Logic Consultancy and is also Director of CMC at Amphista Therapeutics.

Luke Chambers expertise spans polymorph, cocrystal, and salt screening, as well as the design and optimisation of crystallisation and spray-drying processes. In addition, he has experience conducting solid-form development studies on peptides and on highly potent active pharmaceutical ingredients (HPAPIs). Furthermore, Luke has extensive experience in developing amorphous dispersions to enhance solid-state properties to improve drug performance. He earned his PhD from Durham University, where his research focused on the formation and stability of coamorphous systems and the generation of cocrystals to help understand the mechanisms underlying personal care formulations.

Richard Edwards is a Senior Scientist who has worked at Veranova for over 10 years, on a wide range of projects in the solid form crystallisation space. These include polymorphism, salt, cocrystal and chiral screening to crystallisation development and DoE studies on both small molecule API and New Chemical Modalities (e.g. peptides and PROTACs). Before this role, he completed his PhD at the University of Warwick, understanding the structure and function of integral membrane proteins involved in antibiotic resistance mechanisms, with a focus on expression and purification of proteins and structure/function analyses by NMR and activity assays.

Fragkoulis (Frank) Theodosiou is a final-year PhD candidate in the DuMoC² group at Durham University, led by Prof Aurora J. Cruz-Cabeza. His research, sponsored by Pfizer, focuses on pharmaceutical solid-state chemistry, with particular emphasis on understanding, predicting and modelling hydrate formation from both thermodynamic and kinetic perspectives.

He holds a MEng in Chemical Engineering from the University of Manchester and an eMBA from the London School of Economics. Frank is an active member of the crystallisation community serving as the chair of the Young Researcher Committee and a Co-opted Committee member of the British Association for Crystal Growth.

Cristina holds a PhD in material sciences from Ecole Normale Superieure in Lyon, France, where she developed new solid-state luminescent materials. Cristina joined Veranova in 2018, working and gaining expertise on a variety of solid form projects, from screening to crystallisation, scale-up and analytical sciences. She has been supporting the Amorphous Solid Dispersions team and has led internal research projects related to amorphous quantification or implementation of new software to fast track experimental procedures.

Kasia joined Veranova as a placement student in 2021, building a strong foundation in Amorphous Solid Dispersion (ASD) and spray-drying technologies through internal projects. After graduating in 2023 with a Master’s degree in Chemistry with Drug Discovery from the University of Strathclyde, she returned to Veranova as a full-time solid state scientist. In addition to her core responsibilities, Kasia has made significant contributions to both internal and client-focused ASD projects. She has also been heavily involved in spray-drying process optimisation initiatives, further strengthening her expertise in this area.

Dr. Thomas Vetter studied chemical and bio engineering at ETH Zurich. After completing his doctorate on the crystallization of organic molecules, work that was recognized with the EFCE Excellence Award, he conducted a postdoctoral stay at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as in industry at Eli Lilly & Company in Indianapolis. He subsequently led a research group as a professor at the University of Manchester, focusing on industrial and fundamental challenges in particle technology and crystal chemistry – work that was supported by a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship. From 2020 to 2025, he headed a department at Lundbeck in Copenhagen responsible for the discovery and characterization of crystal forms of new pharmaceuticals, as well as their process development from the laboratory scale through scale up. He is now Professor of Pharmaceutical Process Engineering at FHNW in Switzerland.