Dr O’Kennedy has over twenty years of experience in the biopharmaceutical sector having worked in academia and for large biopharmaceutical companies and CMOs . Dr O’Kennedy started his career at the Dept of Biochemical Engineering in UCL as a Post Doc researcher focused on Plasmid DNA vaccines. He joined the GSK Bioprocess Development Group in Beckenham in 2000. At GSK, he focused on upstream development of mammalian cell culture & microbial processes for clinical manufacture, process monitoring & control and technical transfer of processes into clinical manufacturing of MAbs and DNA vaccines. In 2009, he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Newcastle University providing a biopharmaceutical industy focus to the Biopharmaceutical Bioprocessing Technology Centre.
In 2011, Dr O’Kennedy moved to Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechologies (FDB) R&D where he was Head of Mammalian Cell Culture Process Development. His group focused on development of mammalian cell culture based bioprocesses for manufacture of MAbs and biotherapeutic drugs.
In 2015, he started ROK Bioconsulting providing services and consultation to the biotech industry to speed process development to manufacture and maximise the value of development data. Research interests include linking upstream process performance to downstream product quality. He has over twenty five publications and patents in the bioprocessing field . He is particularly interested in data driven process modeling, Process Analytical Tools (PAT) and Quality by Design (QbD) used to maximise the value of process data and its re-use throughout the product development lifecycle.
