leadership

Eagle's executive management team are a team of top bioinformaticians, whose major achievements include leadership roles in several key open-source bioinformatics projects that have defined the way in which research in the field proceeds.

Joining them on the board are some of Cambridge's best business minds with many years combined experience in growing startup companies into major global organisations. 

Together, the combination of scientific expertise with sharp business thinking has helped Eagle establish itself as a major force to be reckoned with in the biotechnology and bioinformatics sectors.

Alan Barrell, Chairman

Alan Barrell has spent almost 30 years in senior executive positions in technology based industries and has become one of Cambridge's most articulate promoters of entrepreneurship. He was a founder shareholder in Library House Ltd, and is now Entrepreneur in Residence at the University's Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning and Visiting Professor of Enterprise at the University of Bedfordshire School of Graduate Business Studies. He is also Distinguished Guest Professor at Xiamen University, Visiting Professor at Shanghai College of Science and Technology and at the Fujian International School of Economics and Business, Fuzhou, all in China. He has taught at Tsinghua University Beijing and Minjiang University, Fuzhou City. Other appointments include Senior Enterprise Fellow, University of Essex, International Fellow, Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge, and International Fellow, Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki.

Vernon Harten-Ash, Non-Executive Director

Vernon practised as a Medical Officer in the Royal Navy before joining the pharmaceutical industry and becoming Medical Director. Following an MBA at Wharton Business School in the USA he worked as management consultant, carrying out a range of assignments. In 1994, he established the Harten Group, which has gained a first class reputation among key industry players for its proactive approach, rapid provision of high calibre consultants from its 2000-strong network, outstanding contacts and in-depth knowledge of the global pharmaceutical and biotech industries. A committee member of BRAPP, Vernon is actively involved in healthcare training for the pharmaceutical industry. His interest in education and training has led to his mentoring role within the Prince's Trust and The Duke of Edinburgh's Award.

David Flanders, Chief Executive Officer

David has over 25 years' international experience leading diverse teams and operations in successful delivery of technology and bioinformatics projects in the life sciences sector. His former positions include Site Head for the UK operation of Stem Cells, Inc; COO of a proteomics and systems biology start-up; and Senior Director of Lion Bioscience. He has US experience both in the agricultural technology industry and at Stanford University. David has a PhD in Developmental Biology from the Australian National University.

Christopher O'Connor, Chief Financial Officer

Chris is a Chartered Accountant with some 20 years experience operating in the high technology sector. As Finance Director and CFO respectively he was involved in the sale of Kapiti Limited to Misys plc in 1994 and Psytechnics Limited to Netscout Systems, Inc (NASDAQ: NTCT) in 2011. He has been involved in numerous funding events particularly with Cambridge Broadband Networks where he was CFO for 6 years and at Psytechnics where he was CFO for 5 years. He has led many commercial negotiations with companies such as Microsoft, BT, AT&T and JP Morgan Chase. He has a B.Sc in Economics with Statistics from Bristol University.

Abel Ureta-Vidal, Chief Operating Officer

With over 12 years bioinformatics experience and a scientific background in molecular biology and immune-virology (PhD from the Pasteur Institute, France), Abel first got to grips with bioinformatics tools and code in the early 90s whilst working on viral phylogenetic studies. After his PhD, he joined the effort at Genoscope (Evry, France) in ramping up the human genome project, putting in place the automatic gene annotation system for human chromosome 14. In 2001, Abel moved to the European Bioinformatics Institute (Cambridge, UK) where he led the Ensembl comparative genomics team until 2007. He founded Eagle shortly before graduating from the Cambridge Judge Business School MBA program in 2008.

William Spooner, Chief Technical Officer

William Spooner is a seasoned operational bioinformatician with a track record of delivering tools for high-throughput genomics research. Having worked previously on Ensembl, BioMart, Gramene and WormBase at the European Bioinformatics Institute, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Cold Spring Harbor, his current focus is on making life easier for users of open source/data in commercial settings. His strategic thinking is driven by the huge opportunities for data analysis in the life sciences provided by the near simultaneous arrival of NGS and cloud computing.

Richard Holland, Chief Business Officer

Richard is a founder member of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation, the organisation that backs most of the key open-source bioinformatics programming toolkits such as BioPerl and BioJava. Richard was also lead developer on BioJava, the primary resource for Java developers working in bioinformatics, and he is first author on the original BioJava paper. Richard has been working in bioinformatics for over 9 years in both industry and academia in the UK, Singapore, and New Zealand.