Born in California, Richard obtained a PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Colorado, followed by an NIH fellowship in Cambridge where he conducted the world's first field release of a transgenic food crop, and created and distributed amongst the most widely cited and licensed enabling technologies in the life sciences. After working with the FAO of the United Nations as Senior Molecular Biologist he founded Cambia in Canberra in 1991. 

Cambia is an autonomous international non-profit institute that creates new technologies, tools and paradigms to bring efficiency and equity to life-sciences enabled innovation.   The Cambia BiOS Initiative (www.bios.net) - the biological open source movement - is an integrated response to increasing science and technology complexity, patent thickets and innovation system inefficiencies. The BiOS Initiative created the first patent-based commons mechanism for science-enabled innovation, and has been the trendsetter in new thinking about patents, collaboraton and public good. As part of this work, Cambia created the Patent Lens, (www.patentlens.net), now the pre-eminent independent public, global open access resource for increasing patent transparency.

Richard has worked and taught extensively worldwide, supporting the Rockefeller Foundation's biotechnology network for over a decade, and has been an advisor to many UN Agencies.   He has been profiled in media including The Economist, Newsweek, Nature Biotechnology, Science, New Scientist, Wired, and Red Herring.

Cambia's work has recently featured in cover editorials in many major life sciences journals. In 2003 he was named by Scientific American to the List of the World's 50 most influential technologists, cited as the World Research Leader for 2003 for Economic Development. In 2005 Richard was awarded the Leadership in Science: Public Service Award by the American Society of Plant Biologists. Richard is an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur of the Schwab Foundation, for which he is a regular panelist at the Davos meetings of the World Economic Forum. In 2009, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Richard became Professor of Science, Technology & Law at the Queensland University of Technology, and Founding Director of the Initiative for Open Innovation (IOI).

View full Curriculum Vitae (info).

Carol holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from Stanford University and a J.D. magna cum laude from University of Puget Sound (now Seattle University) School of Law. She was a biomedical scientist in the academic world for many years before earning her law degree. Her legal focus is patents and their strategic integration with business goals. In private law practice, she often counselled clients on freedom to operate issues and saw the need for more pragmatic learning tools about patents.  Carol was the Director of Intellectual Property and Chief Legal Officer for Cambia until 2004 and oversaw the creation of the Cambia IP Resource. She has now returned to private practice (www.cougarlaw.com) and is retained as a consultant for Cambia.

Paul is an experienced Java developer having spent nine years in the industry in Australia and The Netherlands. He has a strong focus on sustainable software development through agile methodologies and continuous tool refinement without losing sight of project goals. Located in Brisbane, Paul works on open source projects in the stolen moments he calls "spare time" and has a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Peter has joined Cambia as a graphic and website designer. He has recently returned to Brisbane after spending several years living and working in the UK. Peter has a strong focus on website usability and interaction design with 10 years commercial experience as a website designer. He graduated from Griffith University with a Bachelor of Multimedia and also completed a Bachelor of Science at the University of Queensland.

John has a background in large scale Enterprise Software Engineering with a strong mix of hands on technical skills and in-depth Management experience across large business units at the Director level through to small agile geographically distributed development teams. With a career focus on delivering innovation through the application of software engineering ethics and methodologies, John has managed multiple highly complex projects throughout the end-to-end SDLC always with a strong focus on direct stakeholder engagement to successfully deliver critical business outcomes.

Tim joined Cambia in June as a Senior Software Engineer. He graduated from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and has been working on a successful travel holiday website for the past few years. He has a good and broad understanding of web technologies - from complex back-end systems right through to user interface design and development.

Deniz hails from Heidelberg in Germany.  He recently joined Cambia as an Analyst Programmer. Previous roles in Australia and Germany have given him extensive experience in systems engineering, software development and applied bioinformatics in both academic and commercial environments. He holds a double degree in Computer Science and Bioinformatics from the University of Bonn, Germany with a strong focus on distributed computing and bioinformatics.

Andrae is an experienced Software Engineer with an extensive background in the engineering aspects of Information Management. He has worked on metadata management for such diverse fields as Oil and Gas Exploration, Telecommunications Network Management, Records Management, and The Semantic Web. He has been an active member of the Open-Source community for the past 14 years, with a corresponding interest in the development of modern intellectual property law. An unapologetic geek — a spare moment is enjoyed, reading old books, studying the semantics of programming languages, and playing board games.

James is an experienced software engineer and has gained extensive experience working in various organisations across multiple industries including Banking, Insurance, Energy and Defence. He is originally from Paisley in Scotland and emigrated to Brisbane 8 years ago. James holds a Degree in Computer Science and a Masters Degree in Advanced Computer Systems Development.

Nat has been involved in the web since its very early days, when he ran the first web site in New Zealand.  He chaired conferences for O'Reilly Media on topics as diverse as Open Source software, Bioinformatics, and Internet GPS and mapping.

Photo by James Duncan Davidson

Ben is experienced in managing and delivering complex, network based, distributed systems using Agile development methodologies. He likes to stay current with the latest ideas surrounding software development and contribute to furthering the art and science ofhis  profession for the benefit of all.