Co-Director and Hardware Designer

Nicholas Burczyk

Nick is a research engineer. During his career, he developed novel scientific equipment to advance medical research using emerging rapid prototyping as well as classic manufacturing techniques. He specialises in multidisciplinary R&D, designing hardware and software, and system integration with commercial products. Previous projects have included developing high throughput robotic systems for tissue capture and storage, multitude of mechanical and optical systems, pneumatic and microfluidics at SWC. Nick also worked on collaborative projects to provide solutions from concept design to fabrication for scientists at NIMR. He has extensive knowledge and skills in 3D design, 3D printing, ISO drawing and CNC machine design. Finally, he also worked at Ocado as a project manager.

Education

• MSc. in Bioscience Technology, University of York    (2012)

• BA Biochemistry and cell biology, Trinity College Dublin (2011)

Lead Software Developer

Richard Faville, PhD

A bioengineer with more than 10 years of experience in the field of Bio-engineering and Theoretical Neuroscience. Specialises in developing image processing algorithms, instrument control, experimental design, machine learning/computer vision, mathematical modelling, and large-datasets quantitative analysis. Previous projects include creating software packages for designing/analysing animal behavioural and neuronal tissue imaging experiments and spike sorting analysis.

Richard develops software applications for academic research (developed mainly using Python or Matlab). Throughout his previous work history, he was employed as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within a computational neuroscience lab at the Queensland Brain Institute with Geff Goodhill and Bruno van Swinderen, in Brisbane, Australia. Additionally, he has completed several large-scale software for academic labs around the world (USA, UK, Australia) working as an independent software developer/data scientist. Furthermore, he have worked in the private sector as a bioinformatician developing pipelines for analysing SNP/whole genome datasets.

Education

• PhD in Bioengineering  (2004-2009) from Auckland Bioengineering Institute (University of Auckland)
  Dissertation: Mathematical Modelling of Gastrointestinal Tract Cellular Pacemaker Activity.

• BE (1st Class Hons.) in Engineering Science     2000-2003)
  Dissertation: Reverse Engineering of Genetic Regulatory Networks.

Co-Director and scientific ADVISER

Benjamin Kottler, PhD

A behavioural scientist with more than 10 years of experience with Drosophila research. Trained in cutting edge laboratories with proficient behavioural expertise and circuit investigations. He did his PhD with Thomas Preat on learning and memory in Paris. He then did his 1st postdoc in Australia with Bruno van Swinderen investigating the interplay between sleep and general anesthesia. He relocated in 2015 in UK and worked with Frank Hirth on mechanisms of action selection at King’s College London. Ben published several papers in top-tier journals and presented his work at international conferences.

Education

• PhD in molecular and cellular biology (2003-2009) Université d’orsay Paris XI, Paris, France
  Dissertation: : Identification and characterization of new long-term memory mutants in Drosophila melanogaster.