Stephen

Welcome to our family website.

We live in Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, and there’s four of us – myself, Joy, and our two daughters, Ella and Martha.

I’ve had a career in marketing scientific software for Cambridge University spin-out companies (more details below). After a short career break (I’d planned a ‘gap year’ including plenty of travel, but the coronavirus lockdown got in the way of that ) I’m now back at work with another interesting start-up, Intellegens.

Although it wasn’t quite the European odyssey we’d planned for 2020, we did manage to have a great 3 week round-trip to the Scottish highlands in our new campervan. And we’re looking forward to planning many more trips in future – I’ll probably blog about them here, along with the pleasures of the Monday walks that Joy and I are now enjoying, since we are both working part time.

Here’s some more stuff relevant to my history:

  • In 1990, I joined Cambridge University spin-out Cambridge Molecular Design, which did molecular-level modelling of materials. CMD was acquired by Molecular Simulations Inc. (MSI) in 1991 and I stayed with its successor companies through many mergers and acquisitions for over 15 years. A great opportunity to gain experience, travel, and work with interesting people and companies. When I left, it was Accelrys Inc., the top name in modelling software for chemistry and life sciences. It’s now called Biovia.
  • From 2006-2020, I worked for Granta Design. I joined Granta, a University of Cambridge start-up when it was just 35 people, and I managed marketing and product management for the company as it grew to nearly 200 people, becoming the leader in its niche field of software and information resources for materials engineering. In early 2019, we sold the company to Ansys, one of the world’s most successful engineering software companies. After a year supporting the integration of Granta into Ansys, it seemed a good time to take a break after 14 years at Granta – and nearly 30 years in the scientific software business.
  • From 1994-98, while working at MSI, I completed an MBA at the Open University Business School.
  • I’m a Natural Sciences Graduate, specialising in Materials Science, from the Materials Science Department at the University of Cambridge (1987-90).
  • While at Cambridge, I spent 3 happy years as a student at St Catharine’s College.

Some other links of interest to me: