Team

Dr Françoise Barbira Freedman
Research Director

Françoise is a founder Director of Ampika and its Research Director. She is a Cambridge trained Social Anthropologist with main research interests in shamanism, ethnobotany and cross-cultural studies of human reproduction and women’s health. She currently teaches in Medical Anthropology within the Division of Social Anthropology in the University of Cambridge at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her ethnographic research includes a longitudinal involvement with Forest Quechua people in Peruvian Amazonia over 30 years, with the development of a community plant and knowledge conservation project near the city of Iquitos.

Françoise is also the Director of Birthlight, an educational charity set up with Margaret Adey as an outreach project derived from academic research to complement maternity services in the community. She has authored 14 books and contributes actively to scholarship in the international scientific communities concerned with ethnobiology and with women’s health transculturally

Mark Treherne BSc, MPhil, PhD
Founding Shareholder

Mark obtained his PhD in receptor neuropharmacology from Cambridge University, before holding a faculty position at the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland. He has 25 years of experience in the discovery of novel treatments for diseases of the central and peripheral nervous systems, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.

Mark was formerly at Pfizer in the UK, where he was responsible for research into neurodegenerative diseases. On leaving Pfizer in 1997, he set up Cambridge Drug Discovery as Chief Executive, which was sold to BioFocus in 2001. Mark has been involved in fund raisings for various biotechnology companies and is a founding shareholder of Ampika.

Paul Rodgers
Founding Shareholder

Paul is an entrepreneur with thirty years' experience in the life sciences industry, who has co-founded ten biotechnology companies. Paul has led a number of companies from start-up to technology commercialisation and achieved significant exits for early stage investors. He has experience in the healthcare, agriculture and food sectors of biotechnology with particular experience in biomarkers.

Most recently, Paul was Chairman of Psynova Neurotech, a Cambridge University spin-out company focused on biomarkers for neuropsychiatric disorders, from start up through to launch of the first blood test for schizophrenia and subsequent acquisition of the company by Myriad Genetics in 2011.