Dr Chris Kirton

Chris Kirton is a senior leader with many years of experience in both industry and academia. Chris began his operational management career by establishing and growing the Cell Biology and Immunology business unit at a global CRO from a small local team to an international business, offering a full range of GxP services with multi-million-pound revenues. Chris then went on to collaborate with Ludovic Vallier to establish the world’s largest stem cell core facility at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, which delivered the HiPSCi iPSC banking project. He then joined Axol Bioscience as their COO where leading a raft of business transformation and scale-up projects before joining DefiniGEN as first COO and more recently as CEO. Chris is passionate about leadership, team building, and staff development, and has trained as a leader with the Judge Business School and is qualified as a mentor and coach. In his spare time, Chris is a cub scout leader and also runs a community cinema.