Dr Antony J. Fairbanks, Co-Founder and Associate Professor in Organic Chemistry, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Antony Fairbanks completed his first degree at the University of Oxford, staying on to complete a DPhil with Professor George Fleet in 1993. An 18-month Fellowship in Paris with Professor Pierre Sinay at the Laboratoire de Chimie of the Ecole Normale Superieure was followed by a Junior Research Fellowship at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, working with Professor Steve Ley. He returned to Oxford in 1996 to take up a Lectureship in the Dyson Perrins Laboratory and a Fellowship at Jesus College. He was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Carbohydrate Award in 2004. His bibliography contains over 80 peer-reviewed papers and articles. He visited the Chemistry Department at Canterbury in 2006 as a Visiting Oxford Fellow as part of the Oxford-Canterbury Exchange Scheme (Erskine Programme), and joined the Department as an Associate Professor in January 2009.

Prof. Benjamin G. Davis, Co-founder and Professor of Organic Chemistry, University of Oxford

Prof. Davis is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford where he also completed his DPhil. After a two year postdoctoral position at the University of Toronto he became a Lecturer at the University of Durham, UK. In 2001 he returned to the University of Oxford and received a fellowship at Pembroke College. His research group focuses on chemical biology, carbohydrates and proteins. This work has received the RSC Meldola medal and prize 1999, RSC Syngenta Carbohydrate Award 2001, the AstraZeneca Strategic Research Award, a DTI Smart Award, a Mitzutani Foundation for Glycoscience Award, the Philip Leverhulme Prize 2003, the Royal Society Mullard Award 2005, and the RSC Corday-Morgan medal and prize 2005.

In 2003 he was named amongst the world's top 100 young innovators by Technology Review, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s innovation magazine. The Davis group has published over 100 papers, patents and book chapters.