Jeremy Carmichael joined Astex as associate director business development in October 2001. He has more than 25 years of business development experience in the biotech and academic research sectors. His extensive agreement experience spans the range from drug discovery and development alliances with global pharma companies and leading academic research institutes to all other agreements supporting R&D activities at Astex. Prior to Astex he was director of a biotechnology centre at Queens University Belfast and the University of Ulster focused on technology transfer of life science research, and was a senior molecular biologist at Cantab Pharmaceuticals, one of the earliest UK-based biotech companies, having completed a postdoc at the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Cambridge. He has a BSc in Genetics and Microbiology from Queens University Belfast and a PhD in Molecular Biology from the Australian National University.