Executive
Dr Greg Collier - Chief Executive Officer.
Dr Collier has more than 20 years experience spanning commercial, operational, clinical and scientific aspects of pharmaceutical research and development. He is a regular invited speaker at international research and biotechnology conferences and served on many Australian State and Federal Government Committees. He held many senior positions in Biotechnology companies including CSO, COO, CEO and Managing Director. Following his appointment as CEO at Autogen Pty Ltd and then AGT Biosciences and ChemGenex, Dr Collier steered the company from a research-based company with a market capitalization of $10M to a company worth $230M with completed clinical trials and regulatory dossiers submitted to the FDA and EMA.
Dr Collier was directly involved in the planning and execution of;
- M&A due diligence and implementation (an acquisition and a demerger);
- Post merger integration of operations;
- Multiple capital raisings (from domestic and international investors);
- Listing on the NASDAQ exchange;
- IP acquisitions worth >$35M;
- Research alliance deals with biotech and pharma companies (Merck KGaA, Sequenom, Vernalis) worth >$30M;
- Major licensing deals (the licensing of ChemGenex's asset omacetaxine in Europe to Hospira Inc. for >A$130M),
- The eventual sale of ChemGenex to Cephalon for A$230M.
Prior to his commercial pharmaceutical career, Dr Collier had an outstanding academic career resulting in over 150 peer reviewed publications and senior authorship on 33 patents. Some publications relate to Omega 3 lipids. During his academic career, Dr Collier was awarded a prestigious NHMRC fellowship and attracted over $30 million of funding from NHMRC, ARC and Industry for his research in Diabetes and the Metabolic Syndrome. Dr Collier was a Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Deakin University as well as earlier positions at Melbourne, Monash University and the University of Toronto. He was also the inaugural Alfred Deakin Professor at Deakin University.
Following his academic career, Dr Collier established himself as a highly regarded and successful biotechnology senior executive with an outstanding record of achievement in corporate management, strategic planning and implementation across the global biotechnology industry.
Dr Collier was awarded the Roche Award of Excellence for his contribution to the Biotechnology Industry by the Australian Biotechnology Organisation in 2010.
RICHARD JUSTICE - Chief Financial Officer.
BCOM, MBA, CA, CMA, ACIS
Mr Justice is Chief Financial Officer of Photonz and has extensive financial and general management experience in both public and private companies in the biotechnology and IT sectors.
Most recently, Richard was CFO of Living Cell Technologies Ltd, a NZ headquartered biotech company listed on the ASX in Australia ("LCT") and on the OTCQX in the United States ("LVCLY"). Previously, he was CEO (and prior to that COO and CFO) of Brocker Technology Group Ltd ("BKI"), which was a major Information Technology company in New Zealand, initially listed on the ASE in Alberta, Canada and subsequently migrated to the Toronto Stock Exchange and then the NASDAQ.
At both Living Cell Technologies and Brocker Technologies Richard was responsible for leading the listing process and has been involved in capital raising activities in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
HYWEL GRIFFITHS - Chief Scientific Officer.
MA(CANTAB), PHD(CANTAB)
Dr Griffiths is Chief Scientific Officer for Photonz. He studied Natural Sciences at Gonville and Cauis College, Cambridge, England where he graduated top of his class in microbial genetics.
He then went on to complete a Ph.D., also with the University of Cambridge. After undertaking post-doctural research at the Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology in Uppsala, Sweden, Hywel contributed to the development of a molecular diagnostic technology at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth. He has been leading the process development team at Photonz since 2006.