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Nigel is an Emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Qiushi Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Zhejiang.  He is a former Pro-Vice Chancellor and Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at Cambridge, where he held the Chair of Chemical Engineering 1999 from 2000 to 2020.

Nigel obtained BA and PhD degrees in Natural Sciences whilst a student at Sidney Sussex College and was a Research Fellow in Chemistry at Fitzwilliam College in 1978.  He became a University Assistant Lecturer in Chemical Engineering in 1979.

Nigel left academia in 1985 to lead the Bioprocessing Section at Unilever's research laboratories in the Netherlands and in 1990 he joined Wellcome Biotech to lead the process design for their WelGen (later BWMI) interferon manufacturing plant in Rhode Island (US) and process development for the Campath-1H antibody.  He was a co-founder of Cobra BioManufacturing plc and Angel Technology Ltd, which was awarded the Queen's Award for Innovation in 2006.

Nigel was appointed to a Professorial Fellowship upon returning to Cambridge in 2000 and was President of Fitzwilliam College from 2009 to 2013.

Selected recent publications

Li D, Hu D, Xu H, Patra HK, Liu X, Zhou Z, Tang J, Slater N, Shen Y (2020). Progress and perspective of microneedle system for anti-cancer drug delivery, Biomaterials, doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2020.120410.

Xiao, B., Zhou, X., Xu, H., Zhang, W., Xu, X., Tian, F., Qian Y., Yu F., Pu C., Hu H., Zhou Z., Liu X., Patra H., Slater N.,Tang J., Gao J., Shen, Y. (2020). On/off switchable epicatechin-based ultra-sensitive MRI-visible nanotheranostics - see it and treat it. Biomaterials Science. doi: 10.1039/d0bm00842g

Sun, Y. N., Shi, C., Zhang, Q. L., Yao, S. J., Slater, N. K. H., & Lin, D. Q. (2020).  Model-based process development and evaluation of twin-column continuous capture processes with Protein A affinity resin. Journal of Chromatography A, 1625. doi: 10.1016/j.chroma.2020.461300

Maier, T., Bonner, O., Peirce, P., Slater, N.K.H and K. Beardsall (2020).  Drug and nutrient administration on the NICU – is delivery during breastfeeding an alternative to oral syringes?  J. Neonatal Nursing 26, 152 – 156. doi: 10.1016/j.jnn.2019.09.009.

Alanazi, I. O., Benabdelkamel, H., Alghamdi, W., Alfadda, A. A., Mahbubani, K. T., Almalik, A., Alradwan I., Altammami M., Slater N.K.H., Masood, A. (2020).  A proteomic approach towards understanding crypoprotective action of Me2SO on the CHO cell proteome. Cryobiology. doi: 10.1016/j.cryobiol.2020.04.001

Shi, C., Gao, Z. Y., Zhang, Q. L., Yao, S. J., Slater, N. K. H., & Lin, D. Q. (2020).  Model-based process development of continuous chromatography for antibody capture: A case study with twin-column system. Journal of Chromatography A.doi:10.1016/j.chroma.2020.460936

Tian, D., Xu, H., Xiao, B., Zhou, X., Liu, X., Zhou, Z., Patra, H.K., Slater, N.K.H., Tang, J. and Y. Shen (2020).  Single-step formulation of levodopa-based nanotheranostics – Strategy for ultra-sensitive high longitudinal relaxivity MRI guided switchable therapeutics.  Biomaterials Science. doi: 10.1039/C9BM01799B.