Nexxus Scotland

Eleanor Mitchell, Managing Director, ITI Life Sciences

Q : So, for those of us who don't know - what does the Managing Director of ITI Life Sciences actually do?

A: At ITI Life Sciences, we identify global market opportunities and create commercially driven research programmes which we fund and manage. The resulting intellectual assets are exploited to benefit the Scottish economy through commercialisation revenues, a growing skills base and job creation.     

My role has a number of key aspects.  Clearly, I head up the Life Sciences team here in Dundee, but I also have a role within ITI Scotland, reporting to the board and as part of the operations team.  And there's an external aspect as well, particularly liaising with our primary stakeholders (Scottish Enterprise and Highlands & Islands Enterprise), research providers, commercial partners, members and the life sciences community in general.  Part of this I can achieve through attendance at the Life Sciences Alliance and Industry Advisory Group meetings, but we also try to visit companies and research groups regularly.

Q : Tell us about a typical day (or is there no such thing?).

A: Because our portfolio is so varied, there's no such thing as a typical day!  But key focus areas just now are developing our foresighting strategy (from which we identify new R&D programmes) and ‘closing' some of earlier programmes, ensuring that we capture and exploit all of the assets generated. 

I usually spend a day each week in the ITI Scotland offices in Glasgow, meeting with the MDs of ITI Energy and Techmedia, the Group CEO and operational functions.  Whilst there, I usually arrange a couple of meetings with key groups in the west to keep them aware of our activities.

Maintaining the ‘pipeline' of R&D opportunities is always on the calendar.  We've got a couple of very exciting programme opportunities coming through and, being publicly funded, we have to ensure an exceptionally high level of professional and commercial diligence.  Although this can appear to slow things up, our investment of time and money into new technologies must fit our model and produce strong economic impact in Scotland.

Q : So what's taken up most of your time recently?

A: We've been pretty busy with recruitment over the last few months, largely because we're entering a new ‘delivery' phase in the ITI model.  We've appointed a new Director of Commercialisation to help exploit the technologies that the programmes are generating, we're strengthening our Technology and Markets team to accelerate the identification of new programmes and we're very pleased to have recently appointed a new Director of Programmes after a lengthy search for the right individual.

As our financial year starts in April, we've been planning and budgeting for 08/09.  Foresighting activities that we start this year will take about 18-24 months to become active research programmes, so we try to predict which market areas will be ‘ripe' for ITI programme platform technologies in about 5 years time.  Not an easy task, I'm sure you'll agree!  So another of my roles is to ensure that the team is supported and understand that we're making ‘educated predictions' in an area of pre-commercial research; so we might not get it right every time.

Q : What's on the cards for the next few months?

A: We're planning the next meeting of our Scientific Advisory Board who provide guidance on the technologies identified as potential programmes.  It's also a busy time for conferences; we're sponsoring the Dundee -Toulouse Cancer Research Alliance Conference, attending the BIO 2008 in San Diego and speaking at Stem Cells Europe in Amsterdam, as well as many others.

We've also put out two ‘calls for expression of interest', in the areas of ‘Gene & Genome Synthesis and Assembly' and ‘Intra-ocular Delivery of Biologics', which is how we first make the relevant sectors of the global life science community aware of our intentions to craft a new R&D programme in a particular field.  A significant level of dialogue with research groups across the world ensures that we engage the best research providers for the programme.

Q : What would you want to do if you weren't doing this job?

A: This is really an ideal job for me.  Before moving to ITI Life Sciences, my career had started to drift into ‘operational' roles and away from direct interaction with science.  Now I'm interacting with innovative technologies again, and sharing the excitement of the people developing those technologies has reminded me why I went into science in the first place.

So saying, I do have 3 boys at school who don't get to see enough of me and I don't spend as much time in the garden as I would like.  I'd also like to find time for regular exercise that would keep me fit enough to give the boys a run for their money when we play basketball!

For further information on ITI Life Sciences. contact Gordon Struthers T : 01382 568072,
E : gordon.struthers@itilifesciences.com, W : www.itilifesciences.com