Stephen Aston Email & Phone Number

London, England, United Kingdom

• Regularly report progress to the Finance Director (my manager) in order to achieve the UWC IO’s goals working within strict timeframes. • Generate data reports to support Philanthropy in demonstrating the impact of the money given by our Donors. • Responsible for collecting, ensuring data integrity and analysing data from the Finance Leads from the schools to generate reports to support decision making and inform future development across the UWC movement. • Maintain multiple databases in the organisation, ensuring data integrity and communicating between teams to improve data collection and reduce duplication of data. I also support optimal functioning of our IT systems.Achievements: • Training others to use Powerbi to generate data reports in different departments. • Created a 400 question survey on Alchemer (which was new to me) to collect data to improve National Committee finances, selections and promotions and connected the responses to a large database. • Voluntarily collated multiple databases spanning 7 years into one larger database for another team to allow us as an organisation to think ahead of further data that donors may like to see. • Support all the teams in the UWC IO in analysing their data for reports and maintain project roadmaps. • Created a tool for a last minute deadline in the Governance team cleaning and collating data.

• Evaluation of enzymes produced by external clients to achieve effective transfer in-house adhering too both in-house deadlines and to the client’s strict deadlines.• Regularly communicate progress to seniors and to external clients.• Authorship and review of technical data summaries adhering to Touchlight’s Standard Operating Procedures• Design project roadmaps using Gantt functions in MS Excel. • Schedule meetings, take minutes and drive the projects forward to completion.• Prioritise my workload, action plans, follow up with colleagues from different departments and track progress.• Monitoring and tracking timelines of assigned projects.Achievements:• Created search engines in MS Excel to align critical process parameters across different department’s. databases. Hence identifying process bottlenecks that allow for the development of mitigation strategies that minimise risk and allow for the company to make good business decisions.• Optimised the transfer of projects that allowed for 40-fold reduction in cost of goods.

London, England, United Kingdom

• Keep up to date with the latest regulations and apply them. • Provided support to meet audit objectives.• Action plans, follow up with colleagues from different departments, assign actions and track project progress.Achievements:• Developed excel tools trending KPIs and recommending good business decisions.• Have supported Quality Assurance throughout my employment at Touchlight to meet audit objectives and during audits themselves, for which the KPI tools were invaluable.

Slough, United Kingdom

Process development and optimisation of monoclonal antibodies.Create and manage large datasets to support findings.Support projects on multiple antibody platforms. Authored Development Reports and Data SummariesMaintain technical familiarity with processes and equipment through training, trouble-shooting and meetings.Support the organisation of the laboratories and communicate with external suppliers and internal staff. Achievements:Worked on tight deadlines to develop a process for tech transfer, which performed successfully at large scale. Introduced a more environmentally-friendly glove to the company, which uses a third less nitrile compared to the other popularly used glove. I had to engage with external and internal partners to achieve its integration. This new PPE has contributed to UCB Pharma’s green strategy and will be introduced on different sites.I was also an HSE Bench Facilitator. I lead group discussions to engage laboratory users in best practises. This allowed me to form a network with colleagues in different departments.

London, United Kingdom

Researched the binding mechanism of SGTA to Heat-Shock Proteins 70 and 90.Key techniques employed:Protein Expression from E.coli; Protein Purification using ÄKTA Purifier (Nickel Affinity Chromatography, SEC); Protein concentration determination using Nanodrop; Cloning Site-directed mutagenesis using PCR; SDS PAGE and ITC, NMR and used PYMOL 3D modelling software.I was also trained in Pipette calibration, lab book maintenance, error calculations and statistical data analysis as well as molecular cloning and working under strict deadlines in order to produce experimental results valid according to Standard Operating Procedures.

• Facilitated the pre-publication process for submitted manuscripts. • Customer support- forwarding queries, feedback, and complaints to the relevant teams.• Sensitively updated manuscript progress to authors. • Ensured adherence to quality control measures.• Reported on manuscript metadata, trouble-shot problems in the system and suggested improvements.• Managed close-out of manuscript decisions for revisions, rejections, and approvals.Achievements:• Managed a live load of over 600 manuscripts and liaised with team members and external contacts.• Multi-tasked, prioritized workloads and worked within strict timeframes to meet customer needs.• Lead the assigning of research expertise to the editorial board members in chemistry.

Sheffield, England, United Kingdom

Customer support, advertising events in the student union, collecting user feedback on the student union outlets.

Barcelona Area, Spain

Master Thesis title: ‘Engineering zinc finger nucleases (ZFN) for targeting hub genes.’Cloned the zinc finger nucleases and proved that they cut the target gene using PCR and gel electrophoresis. Acquired experience in agarose gel electrophoresis, Polymerase Chain Reaction, E coli transformation, PCR Purification. I used the Primer3 computer program to sequence the cloned ZFNs.

London, England, United Kingdom

Supported careworkers and cared for children with special educational needs at the Norwood center in north-east London.

Pennsylvania, United States

Supported children aged 8-15 on the special educational needs program on the summer camp. Lived in the cabins with the children and supported and led activities.

Master'S Degree, Biostatistics And Bioinformatics

Learning Python, R, SQL, Molecular Biology, Statistics and Bioinformatics. Accredited by UCAM.

Master'S Of Research, Molecular Biophysics, Merit (68%)

Dissertation: ‘A biophysical study of the binding mechanism of SGTA to the EEVD motifs of Hsp70/90’.

Bachelor'S Degree, Chemistry, 2.1

Dissertation: ‘A Density Functional Theory study of the reaction conformations for the Cativa and Monsanto catalysts.’