Dr Natalie Kenny is the founder and CEO of BioGrad. A multi award winner in 2021, Dr Kenny is the current EVA’s Businesswoman of the Year, winner of The Business Desk Top 50 City Region Leader for Liverpool and winner of The Business Desk’s North West Investment Award among many other accolades. As well as 2021’s award triumphs, Dr Kenny has been awarded the 2022 Liverpool Women In Business, Woman of the year Award and is nominated for Awards at both the Northern Power Women Awards and the Northern Leadership Awards for 2022.
Dr Kenny has a rich background in scientific research with experience of working in ‘big pharmaceutical’ research for Pfizer as well as research roles for St George’s School of Medicine based in the Amazon Jungle, St John Hopkins Medical School based in Peru and the University of Extremadura in Spain. Her doctorate from Cranfield University is in the field of Translational Medicine with specialisation in ‘New Therapeutics For Rheumatoid Arthritis And Childhood Leukaemia.’ Throughout her already successful career, Dr Natalie Kenny has also had the chance to work on Neurological research in Cambridge as well as Allergy and Respiratory Diseases research in Kent. With a clear ambition to provide gold standard scientific, laboratory and clinical training to the next generation, Dr Kenny has the technical know-how, career, and life experience to really make a difference to the lives of the future’s scientists and clinicians
Dr Sherin Pojar is the Biobank Manager at Biograd. Having found her love for science in high school, she obtained her BSc in Molecular Medicine from the University of Ulm (Germany) while gaining laboratory skills volunteering in varied academic laboratories. After completing a Bachelor thesis on the topic of Neurogenesis, she joined an accelerated MSc program at University of Göttingen (Germany) conducting a thesis project related to the field of personalised medicine within the Clinical Pharmacology Department.
After gaining her MSc, she moved to the UK and joined the Liverpool Vaccine Group at LSTM in Liverpool in 2015, contributing to the delivery of human challenge and other clinical trials with a focus on respiratory disease. She was part of the international effort to fight COVID 19, lending her skills to contribute to the testing of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID‑19 vaccine and other COVID19 related clinical trial projects. Since 2016 Sherin also undertook a part-time PhD on the topic of pneumococcal colonization which she successfully completed in 2021.
After more than 6 years in the clinical trial field Sherin left the academic career pathway in favor of an operational focused role joining a Manchester based SME-Biotech company as Laboratory and QMS Manager. Today she is part of the BioGrad team using her varied expertise and skills to help BioGrad realise its scientific strategy.
Dr Yasir Edowik started with BioGrad in our diagnostics arm in March 2021 and was soon promoted to the position of senior scientist for BioGard diagnostics. Yasir is a biological scientist with more than 10 years of laboratory and clinical experience, acquired while finishing his academic qualifications. He has experience as a molecular biologist in many diagnostic laboratories. He graduated from Bangor University in Wales’s School of Medical Science with a Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology. The topic of antibiotic resistance was a crucial aspect of his doctoral studies.
Dr. Yetunde Adegbite is the senior scientist for stem cell biobanking at BioGrad. She started with BioGrad in our Diagnostics arm in January 2022, and was soon promoted to the position of a senior scientist for stem cell banking. An experienced scientist, she has gathered more than 10 years of experience in scientific research, especially in mammalian cell culture, metabolomics, and mitochondrial research. Dr. Adegbite currently supervises a team of scientists that isolate, test, and cryopreserve stem cells from human and equine cord blood, cord tissue, and placenta for long-term banking
Desiree Marquardt joined Biograd Diagnostics as a PCR Screening Scientist in December 2020 while finishing her MSc in DNA Profiling. She quickly established herself as a highly capable team member and was soon promoted to a supervisory position where she contributed to Biograd’s growth into an established Laboratory. Her in depth knowledge of RT-PCR, Laboratory Operations, and Data Management have made her a valuable asset to the business.
Today, Desiree supports the Biobank in Quality control, while simultaneously working on several Diagnostic Research Projects.
