Chemical / Biotechnology - Selected Staff Profiles

Haydn Evans (Chemical/Biotechnology Group Manager & VP European Search Operations) has worked in the IP industry for over 10 years and before joining CPA Global was employed as a Senior Analyst & Strategy Manager for GE Healthcare (formerly as part of Amersham Plc). At GE Haydn was responsible for managing the global patent search team and identifying and implementing tools and methodology to acquire and analyse patent information and was part of a team responsible for embedding a strategic IP culture within GE. Haydn was also responsible for a GE-wide project that looked at the design and implementation of structured landscaping processes to enable informed IP decisions within R&D projects and facilitate strategic business decisions throughout the GE organization. Prior to joining Amersham Haydn worked for an independent search firm (RWS) as a team leader for the chemical/biochemical division. He has a degree in Biochemistry from Nottingham University.

Charlotte Uhlig (Senior Patent Researcher) holds a masters degree (Dipl.-Chem.) of chemistry from the University of Wuppertal. She has a professional track record of 23 years in chemical patent indexing and research. She started her career in industry with IDC (Internationale Dokumentationsgesellschaft für Chemie) indexing patents and literature in IDC databases. She joined the research group of Hoechst AG in 1994. Her research experience covers fields like validity, novelty, patentability, infringement, freedom to operate and state of the art searches in all areas of chemistry, pharmaceuticals and agriculture. She is highly specialized in keyword and structure searches as well as reaction and especially generic structure searches (Markush structures) using STN and Questel databases. Charlotte also possesses skills in structure searching with chemical coding and other coding systems of Derwent.

Alfredo Castro Ibarra, PhD (Chemical/Biotechnology Senior Patent Researcher) is a researcher with extensive experience acquired while working for several leading research centre, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in Germany. In addition to a degree in Pharmacy, he holds a degree in Chemistry from the University of Heidelberg, and a PhD in Chemistry, also from the University of Heidelberg. He also holds further degrees and certificates in Information Analysis at the Technical University of Ilmenau in Germany and Certification in Intellectual Property (DL-101) Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Castro-Ibarra has experience in chemical and pharmaceutical structure (both exact and generic) searching using STN and the databases available on different hosts. He is very knowledgeable in the areas of oncology, gastrointestinal, respiratory, microarrays and medicinal chemistry.

Silke H. Hoffmann, PhD (Patent Researcher) holds a Master’s degree in Biology with focus on Microbiology and Biochemistry. Her PhD thesis was written at the Department of Organic Chemistry and had a biotechnological focus concerning manipulation of secretory protein expression in bacteria. She has 6 years of experience as a research scientist including a post-doctoral Fellowship at the Max-Planck-Institute of Biophysics, working on kinetic aspects of IL-4 binding to its receptor, and post doctoral fellowship and later employment at the Department of Tumor Research of ASTA Medica AG, Germany, studying a receptor involved in hormone dependant cancers. Silke has now over 4 years experience in patent and literature research conducting all kinds of complex searches in the fields of Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics, Biosequences, Biotechnology, Pharmaceutics, Pharmacology, Medicine and medical devices. Dr. Hoffman is a part-time employee.

Susanne Kretschmer, PhD (Patent Researcher), studied Chemistry at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, and holds a Diploma degree and a PhD in Biochemistry and Biotechnology. She was postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. She gained her research experience at WIND GmbH (Wissenschaftlicher Informationsdienst) and SVPG GmbH. She was lecturer at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Information Studies and Communication Sciences for many years. Dr. Kretschmer’s main focus is research in chemistry, biochemistry, biotechnology, molecular pharmacology and molecular biology including biosequence searching using STN (e.g. REGISTRY, DGENE, PCTGEN, USGENE), NCBI, EMBL. Dr. Kretschmer is a part-time employee.

Torsten F. Noll, PhD (Patent Researcher) started his scientific career with a Master’s degree in Pharmaceutical biology and Pharmacology. He then went on to obtain his doctorate in natural products chemistry (organic chemistry) at the University of Würzburg tackling the biosynthesis of fused-ring aromatic polyketides in tissue cultures by means of feeding experiments and subsequent NMR-analysis. He became familiar with the field of patent searching as a co-worker of SVPG, a former division within the Hoechst AG. Torsten experience includes searching STN databases for biomedical keyword searching and thorough patent monitoring. Dr. Noll is a full-time employee working in the office.

Martina Lorey-Radler, PhD (Patent Researcher) has extensive experience in complex patent and literature searches in the fields of chemistry, pharmacy, medicine, agricultural sciences, toxicology, and biotechnology. After her degree in organic chemistry at the University of Würzburg she started as information specialist / patent researcher at Aventis R&T, a former Hoechst company. Dr. Lorey-Radler has experience in chemical structure and reaction searching (including all kinds of hierarchical modes of thinking) on STN (e.g. REGISTRY, BEILSTEIN, MARPAT, CAPLUS, CASREACT, DWPI) and Questel-Orbit (Merged Markush Service, WPIM, PHARM) databases as well as keyword searching using STN databases and databases of other hosts. Dr. Lorey-Radler is a part-time employee.

Steven Johnson (Chemical/Biotechnology Senior Patent Researcher) studied Chemistry for four years at the University of Oxford to obtain a MChem (Hons) Degree including a supplementary subject in molecular aspects of biochemistry and biophysics. He then went on to gain the MSc in Management of Intellectual Property from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. Upon graduating, Steven worked in the chemical search section of RWS Information Ltd where he was made a senior searcher, before leaving to become part of the team at CPA. Steven can conduct patentability and invalidity searches, and also freedom-to-operate searches. He has a good knowledge of patent searching using online databases, such as Chemical Abstracts databases through STN, for keyword and structure searching and end-user databases such as PatBase; as well as non-patent literature material using the collections of the British Library.

Anatoly L. Mayburd, PhD is a patent researcher with extensive experience as a chemical and biological research scientist, including four years as a post-doctoral Fellow at the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute. He has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Russian University of Chemical Technology in Moscow and a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Andrew Walter, PhD (Patent Researcher) studied Chemistry with Modern Languages at the University of Leicester, spending a year researching and synthesizing liquid crystals at the Université de Nice. Andrew studied further for a PhD in Physical Organic Chemistry, also at the University of Leicester, where his thesis focused on the design and modification of amperometric sensors. Before joining CPA, Andrew spent several years at RWS Information Ltd conducting patentability, invalidity and freedom-to-operate searches using classification and keyword based strategies. Andrew is also very familiar with performing non-patent literature searches through the British Library collections and online databases. He is very knowledgeable in the areas of sensor technology, electrochemistry, organic chemistry and polymers.