Andy Powell

Andy joined the Francis Crick Institute in 2024 as Senior Translation Fellow. Prior to joining as an employee at the Crick, Andy was a visiting scientist at the Crick as a GSK director leading collaborative projects within the Crick-GSK Biomedical LinkLabs. Andy supports the Industry Partnerships and Translational Science teams through scoping, developing and reviewing translational project opportunities.  

Andy is a member of the Crick-MSD collaboration Joint Steering Committee and is Translation representative on the Crick-GSK and Crick-AZ-Imperial Prosperity Partnership projects.

Andy has >25 years’ experience within the pharmaceutical industry including leadership of nine pre-clinical drug discovery programs which identified lead small molecules for progression to candidate selection. As a molecular cell biologist and in vitro pharmacologist, Andy has expertise in cell-based assay development and small molecule screening. 

In his prior roles, Andy was a core member of the team which secured the Crick-GSK EPSRC Prosperity Partnership grant in 2020. Within GSK, Andy managed outsourced cell-based reagent and assay development projects; co-ordinated efforts to identify safety-related attrition risks earlier during drug discovery; and led GSK’s strategy to employ human induced pluripotent stem cells for drug discovery.

Andy holds a BSc(Hons) in Microbiology, an MSc in Applied Molecular Biology and Biotechnology and a PhD in Molecular Cell Biology from University of London.