Jonathan Haigh

Jonathan Haigh
Head of R&D DSP Operations
FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies, United Kingdom

Jonathan's initial expose to the biopharmaceutical industry was during an industrial placement year within the Process Sciences department of Avecia Biotechnologies (2000-2001), a biotechnology company based in the UK. He then went to gain a first class honours degree at the University of Durham, reading Molecular Biology and Biochemistry (2001-2004), followed by a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, Institute of Biotechnology, under the supervision of Prof. Chris Lowe, OBE, where he developed novel synthetic ligand chemistries targeting towards whole and fragmented antibody purification (2004-2008). 

He subsequently gained technical project, operational and line-management experience in the biopharmaceutical sector working in both the technology vendor, service provider and end-user sectors. He worked as a Research Scientist for Pall Life Sciences in both the UK (2008-2009) and US (2009-2012) and most recently Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies (2012- current), a Contract Manufacturing and Process Development (CDMO) organisation. Accomplishments include: co-inventor on a global patent enabling a novel approach to chromatography resin design and manufacturing, subsequently licensed to a multi-national technology provider; discovered and named inventor on a number of commercially available mixed-mode resins used in commercial processes world-wide; planning and executing technology evaluation programmes resulting in a multi-million dollar Life Science business acquisition; and successful technical project leadership, delivery and consultation of numerous programmes towards Downstream Process (DSP) design, development and scale-up, working with a diverse range of microbial and mammalian processes, products and therapeutics. His career progression in Fujifilm has taken him through technical roles of increasing responsibility, to a Subject Matter Expert in Chromatographic Separations, a senior Technical Project Leadership role to his current role as Head of Research & Development, Downstream Process Operations (R&D DSP Ops.). He now leads a team of 50+ R&D Scientists and Engineers in developing and scaling live customer processes to deliver medicines and drugs for a global patient population. He also drives a number of internal and external technology development programmes towards improving protein purification capabilities and GMP operations.