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OA Events at Dulwich College
on the spot. The company was called Eco-WMT and was the predecessor to the company I work with today which is called Active Bacterial Solutions (ABS). There is no doubt that 2019 was the right time for ABS to come into being with investors actively looking for sustainable ventures. How did you cope with COVID? We had started working on our flagship product ‘URIZAP’ in the autumn of 2019 and by the spring of 2020 we had made our first prototype batch. You can imagine how it felt being on the cusp of bringing out a product designed to resolve issues of odour and build up of uric acid in urinals, just as everyone was leaving their buildings! The sales team really struggled back then and funding was very difficult to come by. Having said that, the pandemic gave us the space we needed to chart how the company could grow by using science to provide microbial solutions that allow environmentally friendly waste management in industry. ABS is currently the one of the biggest environmental science ventures in the northwest of England and we are looking to go global. We have a team of roughly 20 scientists who are all working on slightly different projects and are solving global challenges. Personally, I went from being in the lab to becoming Head of Product and leading two teams. I look after the manufacturing and commercialization of our products and get to interact with really exciting companies as part of that. One of the best parts of my job is educating clients in sustainability. I'm just focused on ABS right now, but who knows what might be next. What happens next? What is the future for Bobby Holbrook and for ABS? Let's go back to where we started. How does your dad feel about the Bobby Holbrook of 2022? I got one of the weirdest tellings off from my dad recently. All my cousins started calling me Doc in the family WhatsApp group and I was like, stop it, that’s just embarrassing. My dad called me and said, ‘Son, you need to be proud of your achievements’. He really is my biggest supporter and flagbearer.
transfer to Medicine. Yet the modules I enjoyed most took me in the direction of Zoology and the Evolutionary Sciences. The turning point was an inspirational talk given by one of my lecturers on how evolution had created the ability of bees to communicate through dancing. I was fortunate enough to be awarded a small grant that allowed me to work with him over the summer. That project involved the study of how the immune system of fruit flies interacts with their memory. I was vibrating fruit flies on a little machine and seeing whether they remembered the horrible experience I’d just given them. The answer to that is they did and that led to my first scientific publication. That project opened my mind to the study of evolutionary interactions and the idea of compromise in nature. After working on the interaction between immunity and memory, I ended up doing a PhD which focused on the interaction between nutrition and immunity. During my PhD, we were using biological pesticides to see how a species of caterpillar pest have evolved to avoid them, with a view to eventually bringing them under control. As ecologists, we want to do what's best for the environment and the biological route is the way to go, so we started working on bacteria that would make the caterpillars sick. All of this seems to be highly academic in terms of its research. Was a career in academia ever an option for you? Or did you always want to move into something that had a more practical application, perhaps something that could benefit society? I did for a time picture myself teaching at university but a placement in Brazil made me realise that a startup was a possible direction I could go in. While I was there I worked with a small company founded by a group of guys who had decided to turn their PhD into a product they could sell to farmers; I found that so inspiring. That was when I decided that I didn't want to be an academic. So from being an academic you wanted to start your own business? I finished my PhD in 2018 and entered the job market. I started working with Checkout Africa, a social media platform which aimed to raise awareness about racism towards the Black community in the UK, educate people on what Africa looks like today, and show investors the potential of the African market. I was passionate about the work Checkout Africa was doing, but they had no revenue and despite getting a job as lab technician, it wasn’t really enough and the idea of saving money by moving in with my father did not go down well with my new wife. We decided I would keep applying for other jobs and keep Checkout Africa in the background. I wanted to start my own company; the worst thing for me was to join the rat race. By this stage, I had gained some expertise on how bacteria use nutrition, and I saw a job advert for a scientist who could make bacterial products that could be used in commercial environments to clear waste. It was quite ambitious for me to apply as they were looking for a senior scientist with five to ten years’ experience, but one thing that Dulwich taught me was not to be afraid to go for the opportunity. I called the founder of the company and told him that, while I didn’t have the level of experience they were looking for, I did have the scientific expertise. He hired me
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• 020 8299 9284 • events@dulwich.org.uk • dulwichevents.co.uk
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