Foster Richard

Richard Foster (RF) is an Associate Professor at University of Leeds (UoL) & directs a large multidisciplinary team in the area of bioactive small molecule hit identification and optimisation. He joined the UoL in 2009 following a career as a medicinal chemistry project leader in the pharmaceutical industry. His research at Leeds has been supported by a career portfolio of ~£9M of funding from The Wellcome Trust, MRC, ERC, CRUK and BHF. His group at Leeds has identified and optimised small molecules targeted at a diverse array of drug protein classes. RF has led a number of major small molecule hit identification and optimisation projects against a range of target classes. RF has published 33 papers, including recent submissions to Nature Chemistry, Nature Chemical Biology and Nature Microbiology. RF is the co-inventor on 16 patent applications and is the founder of a spin out company at UoL 'Lunac Therapeutics'