Ronan O’Brien – Head of Business Development – Malvern MicroCal
Ronan has a PhD in biophysical chemistry and spent many years working in the area of label-free interaction analysis, a discipline in which he has published widely, including contributions to a number of educational textbooks. He carried out his post-doctoral research with Professor Julian Sturtevant at Yale University and Professor John Ladbury at University College London, before joining MicroCal as an applications expert in 2001. Since then he has held a number of roles including Scientific Marketing Manager and Head of R&D before taking on his current position as Head of Business Development for the MicroCal product group at Malvern Instruments.
What do you hope the audience will learn from this webinar? I hope that attendees will be excited to find out how these new systems, designed specifically for those working in the biopharmaceutical industry – particularly in biocomparability and similarity, manufacturing support, QC, process development, formulation development and candidate selection – will answer some of their key challenges and give them better data more quickly and easily. The webinar will be of real use to those who have an interest in stability testing of protein-based biologics.
What discussions do you look forward to having with the audience?
I would like to discuss ‘next steps’ – what else can we do to improve our products? What annoys them or causes a bottleneck? What do they love, and what could they not manage without? For that, we need constructive criticism from the audience! I would also like to hear about general ‘pain’ points in the industry, so that we can focus our innovation efforts in the right places to provide solutions that give genuine value to our customers.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
I love getting out of the office and travelling all over the world so that I can meet our customers, see what they do and listen to what they have to say. That shows me the real value of what we do here at Malvern. I also love the excitement of collaborating with customers to develop new technologies or features, then bringing those products to market and seeing the difference that our innovations make and the answers they provide.
How did you get into the industry?
Through my post-doctoral work, where I studied protein-ligand interactions and protein stability using biophysical tools, including microcalorimetry (Differential Scanning Calorimetry and Isothermal Titration Calorimetry)!
Where is your favourite place in the world and why?
I have two – is that OK? The first is my garden, because it’s peaceful, has an outlook onto the woods and is full of wildlife, and also my wife is at her happiest when she is there. The second is the Emirates Stadium in London – the home of Arsenal Football Club – because I’m a soccer/football nut and Arsenal is my team.
Join Ronan on February 21st for the webinar ‘Turning up the heat on protein stability characterization’ Register Here for the 10AM London session or Register Here for the 6PM London session