Mark Crowe Email & Phone Number

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

I engage with academic and industry researchers to build collaborative projects which bring together their scientific innovation and AGRF's genomics expertise and infrastructure.

Brisbane, Australia

• QCIF is a not-for-profit company owned by the Queensland-based public universities which provides research computing services and support to these and other research organisations. It employs 60 staff across four.
• Oversee a team of professional support staff working within QCIF’s member universities. Manage relationships with these staff, their local managers, and the universities’ senior executives, to balance differing agendas.
• Coordinate a training program which delivers over 2,500 digital skills training places annually to university research staff and students.
• Undertake QCIF customer and stakeholder engagement activities with academia, industry and government.
• Work with other senior managers to build collaborative projects that combine staff expertise from across the whole company.
• Contribute to the development and implementation of QCIF’s organisational strategy. Achievements

Brisbane, Australia

• San Churro is a national dessert café franchise with around 50 stores and over 1000 employees across Australia.
• Owner/operator of a business employing 20 staff, open 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and generating $1M revenue annually.
• Supervised operational and daily store management, organised all recruitment and staffing, ensured adherence to budgetary and compliance requirements.
• Represented the franchisor in providing operational direction to all seven stores in Queensland, including analysis and advice around financial, compliance, marketing, and HR activities.Achievements
• The store was regularly in the top five ranked stores nationally for year-on-year revenue growth.
• Achieved one of the highest rates of staff retention in the franchise and won the national franchise award for “Best Team Culture” two years in a row (2018 & 2019). Other national franchise awards won included “Local.

• Performed business development and technical consultancy work for academic and commercial organisations in Australia and the US.
• Advised on commercialisation activities, including business planning and financial modelling.
• Carried out market research and engaged with key opinion leaders. Identified opportunities for technical and strategic partnering between commercial and academic parties.
• Prepared and led a successful grant application to Commercialisation Australia.

Brisbane, Australia

• QFAB was a specialist provider of data management and analysis services to life science companies and researchers. It has since become a part of QCIF.
• Developed and implemented the business plan to set up the QFAB training division.
• Led engagement and business development with major customers including negotiation, preparation, and finalisation of contracts.Achievements
• Delivered training to more than 1,500 participants nationwide in the first 2½ years of operation of the training division
• Established partnerships to run workshops at multiple venues across Australia and attracted international experts and companies to visit Australia to deliver training.

Adelaide, Australia

• The Plant Accelerator is a world-leading plant growth analysis research service facility operating through the University of Adelaide.
• Created marketing plan for the Accelerator, developing relevant marketing strategies for different customer groups.
• Established direct communications with around two hundred target customers, ranging from senior managers at major multinational companies to junior researchers.
• Implemented a customer feedback program and carried out customer interviews, identifying several previously unrecognised areas for improvement.
• Coordinated and prepared a $750,000 collaborative grant application involving eight researchers from three universities.
• Organised and presented seminars at more than fifteen institutions across Australia and in Europe, and was invited as an expert speaker at meetings in Europe and the US.

Brisbane, Australia

• The AGRF is Australia’s leading provider of genomics services to academic and commercial researchers, and had over seventy staff in five nodes across Australia.
• Oversaw operations of AGRF Brisbane, the largest of the AGRF sites.
• Worked with the marketing team to build national awareness and uptake of the NGS service. Provided customer education and technical advice.
• Implemented a range of strategic and operational improvements and established strong relationships with suppliers.Achievements
• Increased NGS service revenue over four-fold to a value in excess of $200,000 per month and grew technical team from four to ten people.
• Managed the migration of a key NGS service from Brisbane to Melbourne in support of company strategic objectives with no disruption or delay to service delivery.

Brisbane, Australia

• Pfizer Animal Genetics (formerly Genetic Solutions, prior to its buyout by Pfizer) was a Brisbane-based startup biotechnology company marketing genomics testing to the commercial livestock industry.
• Oversaw all Australian laboratory operations for a NATA-accredited testing facility with a team of seven staff.
• Administered the company’s R&D program, including managing the relationship with our research partners at CSIRO and recording and documenting activities for grant reporting and tax rebate purposes.Achievements
• Continued operational activities efficiently throughout the purchase and takeover of the company by Pfizer.
• Initiated and managed the successful outsourcing of a major service to an external service provider, resulting in a reduction in average turnaround time for results generation from over six weeks to less than three.
• Led and completed a successful $2.8M Commercial Ready federal grant-funded project which generated a significant IP portfolio.

Brisbane, Australia

• Established the Bioinformatics Facility in the SRC for Functional and Applied Genomics to provide bioinformatics resources to researchers at the University of Queensland.
• During two years the facility undertook projects with fifteen different research groups, resulting in twelve peer-reviewed publications
• Designed and ran several training courses for staff and students, and supervised students and visiting scientists from Australia and overseas.

Norwich, United Kingdom

• Provided bioinformatics support for GARNet, a major UK Arabidopsis genome analysis project, and CATMA, a consortium of groups from across Europe.
• Developed innovative software in collaboration with groups from both projects, and set up a searchable, web-accessed database for CATMA.

Phd, Molecular Biology

Ba, Biological Sciences

Graduate Certificate, Business Administration

Certificate Iv In Training And Assessment