Dr Lynsey Dunbar

This newly created role expands the expertise of the IBioIC team as it plays a key role in driving Scotland’s green recovery and contributes to the delivery of the National Plan for Industrial Biotechnology. 

Dr Dunbar joins the team from Scottish Enterprise, bringing a wealth of experience from developing national strategic IB projects and initiatives in her most recent role in the Life & Chemical Sciences sector team, where she was the strategic lead for IB.

She also brings a strong understanding of public sector funding from Scottish Enterprise where she was a Grants Appraisal Officer for R&D funding applications in the Innovation Directorate before joining the sector team.

Dr Dunbar undertook a three-month secondment in Scottish Government working on IB policy development and is the current chair of the Places theme Working group, which is a subgroup of the UK Bioeconomy Strategy Governance Group.

Prior to joining Scottish Enterprise, Dr Dunbar worked as an R&D chemist at the distillers William Grant & Sons where she primarily focused on the optimisation of their anaerobic digestion process.

Speaking on her appointment, Lynsey Dunbar said: “I’m excited to join the IBioIC team as it expands to drive growth in the IB sector. Scotland is a hotbed for IB innovators, but we need to do more to support their journey to commercialisation, to avoid the ‘valley of death’ for companies between the pilot and demonstration-scale stage. We want to ensure they achieve commercial success which will ultimately make certain the manufacturing sector in Scotland achieves the ambitious net-zero targets set by the Scottish Government. Understanding the funding landscape and the opportunities available is critical to the success of these companies.”

Mark Bustard, CEO of IBioIC, added: “We are delighted to have Lynsey on board.  She will have a key role to play in supporting Scottish IB companies to identify and secure funding that will drive sector growth and innovation. Biotech solutions are increasingly sought to the global environmental challenges, and Lynsey will help companies to realise their ambitions by turning their science into commercial solutions that can help to tackle climate change.”

Scotland is already leading the UK as a centre for environmental and agricultural biotech start-ups, with positively disproportionate growth to the rest of the UK, according to the recent BioCity UK Life Science Start-Up Report.  

IBioIC’s expert team offers advice and assists with all aspects of IB projects from development of technical work programmes, identification and securing of funding, to practical delivery. IBioIC can also offer companies the opportunity to apply for seed funding support to help develop their bioprocesses in partnership with the technical team in their Scale-Up Centres.

Since its inception in 2014, the IBioIC has overseen the doubling of industrial biotech in Scotland to over £350m and supports over 130 companies, over 50 research projects and 18 Scottish universities and research institutes.