Leadership

Dr Peter Wigley - Director, Co-Founder and Head of Research.

Dr Wigley has a MAgSc in Entomology from Massey University, New Zealand and a PhD in entomology (University of Oxford).

Dr Wigley spent two years as a research economist at the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Canberra, Australia before undertaking a D.Phil. at Oxford University.  In 1977 he joined the Department of Scientific Research (DSIR) and in the succeeding years worked in the areas of insect population dynamics, insect artificial diets and insect pathology. As leader of the Natural Pesticides group he established a collection of 7000 Bacillus thuringienesis (Bt) isolates and pioneered the development of miniaturised high throughput screening systems to test their insecticidal activity. In June 1994 he left HortResearch to co-found BioDiscovery.

Dr Andrew Broadwell - Director, Co-Founder and Head of Operations.

Dr Broadwell has a BSc in microbiology from the University of Washington, Seattle and a PhD in microbiology from  University of California, Davis.

Dr Broadwell worked for 3 years at the University of Washington in oral anaerobic bacteriology and the microbiology of marine sediments.  He then undertook doctoral studies with Dr Paul Baumann at U.C. Davis to investigate the mosquitocidal proteins  and molecular biology of Bacillus sphaericus. In 1989 Dr Broadwell joined the Bt research programme at DSIR in Auckland researching the cloning and expression in plants of Bt genes active against endemic New Zealand pests. Dr Broadwell cloned several Bt genes with novel activities from the DSIR Bt collection before leaving HortResearch in June 1994 to co-found BioDiscovery. 

Other Key Personnel

Dr Stephen John Bloor - Leader Natural Products Chemistry.

Dr Bloor has a BSc(Hons) in Chemistry from Massey University, New Zealand and a PhD in marine natural product chemistry from the University of Oklahoma, USA. 

Dr Bloor began his career as a Forensic Scientist in the DSIR, Wellington. In 1982 he was awarded an NRAC Fellowship beginning a career concentrated on natural product chemistry with Chemistry Division DSIR, then Industrial Research Ltd, Lower Hutt, working on bioactives from plants and plant pigment chemistry. In 1993 he was a Visiting Scientist at Zeneca Agrochemicals, Bracknell, UK and in 2000-2001, Dr Bloor was a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia (microbial natural products group). Dr Bloor joined BioDiscovery in 2001 as a TIF Fellow, to work on microbial natural products and was appointed as Leader, Natural Products Chemistry in 2003.