Matthew Cooper

Professor Matt Cooper is a scientific entrepreneur. He spends half his time in industry within companies that he has founded and half his time in academia. Professor Cooper is working to help us live longer, quality lives by improving the way we understand and diagnose disease. He is also working to stem the arrival of a ‘superbug crisis', which he refers to as a perfect storm. When travelling through Asia for three years, Professor Cooper saw that people were dying in alarming numbers from infection. It was a significant source of motivation to pursue his current research. He wanted to help the poor people of the world. Having a background in chemistry and biology, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge, where scientists and managers were open to research collaboration between industry and academia. Committed to translation, Professor Cooper then commercialised his discoveries. His commitment to translation is evident from his team’s track record.