Glasgow's DeepMatter names new chairman amid 'very exciting' time for firm

DeepMatter Group, the Glasgow-based digital chemistry specialist, has appointed a new chairman amid a “very exciting” time for the business.

Alan Aubrey takes over from Karen Bach, who is retiring from the board and leaving the group. He takes up the non-executive chairman’s role after the firm’s annual shareholder meeting on May 27.

DeepMatter said Aubrey has a successful 20-year track record in founding, developing, and growing disruptive technology businesses.

He co-founded Techtran in 2002, which was acquired in 2005 by IP Group, a company that develops “world-changing” science and technology businesses across life sciences, technology and cleantech.

Aubrey was appointed IP Group’s chief executive shortly after the acquisition and he went on to lead the business to become a member of the FTSE 250.

He is currently non-executive chairman of OxCCU, an Oxford University spin-out focused on sustainable fuels, chemicals and plastics. He also is a director of both Trellix and Rio AI, which are applying artificial intelligence to address business problems.

Mark Warne, chief executive of DeepMatter, said: “On behalf of everyone at Deepmatter, I would like to thank Karen for her valued contribution and support over the last 20 months which sees the business well positioned for the market opportunity ahead of it.”

Bach said: “Over the past 20 months the group has built a great team and established the building blocks to commercialise both data and technology. I am proud of the progress we made in this early commercialisation phase. The business has an exciting delivery phase ahead and I wish the team well.”

Glasgow firm DeepMatter's technology enables scientists across a range of industries, including pharma, biotech, agri-science, scientific publishers and contract research organisations, to capture, access and exploit the vast amounts of data created in chemical reactions.

Chairman-designate Aubrey added: “I am joining Deepmatter at a very exciting and dynamic time. Chemistry touches all our lives but the research and development of new chemical formulae remains relatively unsophisticated.

“Our vision is to build the capabilities for scientists to access and exploit vast amounts of chemical reaction data.

“Our SmartChemistry platform provides easy access and exploitation of the data in order to make chemical reaction discovery and design faster, safer, more efficient and increasingly sustainable.”

Last week, DeepMatter said it would be getting a six-figure boost after extending its commercial relationship with a major global research publisher.