Francis W. Email & Phone Number

East Malling, England, United Kingdom

Project Management: 'Cradle-to-grave' project management, delivery and budget monitoring. Currently have 5 active projects and 3 completed since joining NIAB. Supervisory responsibility over teams of technicians junior staff and postgraduate students. Resident Plant Health Officer with responsibility for adherence to institutional plant health regulations. Grants: Over £1M raised through collaborative efforts as PI and CO-I with over £300K value to NIAB in 2022 alone from UK and EU funders. Partnerships: Have built and maintained impactful partnerships with Industry, Universities and in ODA countries resulting in significant funding and revenues. Outreach: Strong and active national and international scientific presence by continually publishing high-quality research papers, attending national and international scientific meetings, engaging with public and private funders and supervising postgraduate students.

Nairobi, Kenya

A winner of the Royal Society- Future Leaders African Independent Research (FLAIR) Fellowship.I have led research and development of novel 'plant-vectored' viruses as bio-pesticides for cropprotection during this fellowship. Significant milestones;1. Winning three additional grants worth over GBP 510,000 to expand work into inheritable beneficialviruses (48K), bee-vectored viruses (19K) and high-value cropping systems (450K).2. Five Publications in high-impact plant science journals.3. Founding the Centre for Plant-Pathogen Interactions Research- a virtual research centre for plantscientists to encourage scientific collaboration and knowledge sharing (www.plantsciencentre.co.ke).4. International collaboration with researchers at the University of Cambridge, leading to co-supervisionof four students and visiting researchers.

Cambridge, England, United Kingdom

I collaborated with the Molecular Plant Virology group at the University of Cambridge in:1. Developing techniques to generate infectious clones of novel insect-infecting viruses for biocontrol.2. Developing molecular diagnostics tests for cryptic viruses that have the potential to enhance cropperformance.3. Initiating new research on the discovery of bee viruses using high-throughput sequencing.

Saskatchewan, Canada

Science lead in developing molecular diagnostics and the use of high-throughput sequencing(HTS) for detection of viral pathogen(s) of faba bean and pea. Also, scientific lead in the detectionand characterization of psyllid vectored pathogens affecting Black and Mancana Ash Trees inSaskatchewan using molecular biology techniques.1. Discovery of Pea seed-borne mosaic virus (PSbMV) and cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) in pea usingHTS.2. Developed and validated qPCR assays for the detection of PSbMV and CMV making our lab the onlyone in the University of Saskatchewan with the diagnostic capability for rapid screening for both viruses.3. Developed molecular diagnostic tools for a novel Candidatus Liberibacter bacteria transmitted by thecottony ash psyllid (Psyllopsis discrepans). This novel finding has informed epidemiological surveillanceactivities for psyllids in different provinces in Canada.

Ibm Research Lab | Africa, Nairobi Kenya

One of nine awardees of a prestigious and competitive 12-week summer internship at the IBM Research Laboratory, Nairobi, Kenya. • I utilized image analysis, machine learning and computer vision to test the efficiency of four different machine learning algorithms for their effectiveness in diagnosis of virus diseases of bean from images taken using an affordable smartphone.

Nairobi

Duties:1. Provision of sequencing and genotyping services in core facility providing Sanger sequencing andhigh-throughput sequencing to crop and livestock researchers from over 18 countries on a sustainablefull cost recovery basis and generated over 150,000 data points over 3 years2. Gave advice technical advise and delivered high quality research results to scientists from over 20national agriculture research organizations and universities from the eastern Africa region.3. Provided technical expertise and coordination of biological experiments and data analysiscomponents of a study on the genetic diversity of small livestock (Cavies).

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd, Plant Sciences

Activities and Societies: • Member: Reading group - Cambridge Forum for Sustainability and the Environment. • Member: Discussion.

Zoology, Immunology

I independently designed and conducted experiments that utilized an animal (mouse) model and flow cytometry to identify changes in immune.

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Medical Laboratory Sciences, Honours