Meet the team

Hi Sonia, tell us a little about yourself.

Hi, I’m Sonia, I’m a research scientist by training and whilst I believe I can hold my own in the lab, I much prefer working in the background to facilitate scientific endeavour, which is why I gravitated to the service industry.

Tell us about your role at Biofortuna?

Previously, I was the CEO and co-founder of Cryoniss, a specialist temperature-controlled storage company providing access to world-class capabilities for the storage of biological samples and products from controlled ambient to vapour phase liquid nitrogen. In May of this year, Biofortuna acquired Cryoniss providing the opportunity for Cryoniss to accelerate its growth as a world leading service provider.
Having handed over the corporate reins to Biofortuna’s highly experienced senior management team, my new role is Business Manager – Controlled Environment Storage. This means that I can focus my time on the fun parts of the business, talking to customers about their latest scientific endeavours, and working with our operations team to continue to deliver a world class storage service, this time with enhanced capabilities, including ICH Stability Storage services.

What do you enjoy most about your role? 

The best part of my role by far is speaking to customers about their research.  When I started working as a scientist post-graduation, drug-discovery was very much a handle-turning process.  I was a cog supporting the discovery of kinases from High Throughput Screening lead generation activities.  However, as the druggable kinome became saturated, science had to become smarter, hence, the outsourcing, and consequent internal de-risking by large pharma, of early-stage novel therapeutics.  Working in a therapy-agnostic services company like Biofortuna, I talk to researchers and clinicians daily, who are working on some of the most exciting and novel scientific advancements.  It is great to play a small part in their journey by supporting them however we can.