Wednesday 4 December 2013

Hello World



Welcome to the Primerdesign blog! We're going to produce some great content utilising our 'experienced experts expertise' since that is our greatest strength.



Primerdesign is a privately held limited company focused on the design, manufacture, validation and supply of real-time PCR kits and reagents. The company was founded by Rob, Tom and Jim in 2005 as a spinoff from Southampton University's highly respected School of Medicine. Since that humble beginning the company has gone from strength to strength – Thousands of customers in over 100 countries around the World and fantastic reputation in the field. Jim and Rob still run the company and still love the new challenges that it brings every day. Primerdesign now consists of a substantial team of friendly experts, all dedicated to giving our customers a fantastic experience and all thriving in a highly professional environment.


While that might sound all very corporate we try (and succeed) to emphasise our four main values which in addition to professionalism, are Expertise, Friendliness and Dedication. All of our primer-designers are actual people. That might sound silly but usually primers are designed by slapping a sequence into some software and letting it pick what it thinks is the most fitting primer. Our team will actually do it by themselves - obviously software is involved but it is a real human expert who is doing the actual thinking.


We are a friendly company - yes we want to thrive but we also want to see our customers be happy and come back to us if we can help them with their needs. While we don't have a corporate culture per-se, our office and labs atmospheres are quite relaxed which lets us get on with the real work. The fact that we have a sweetshop with free sweeties for everyone in the company is an added perk! This also extends outwards towards our customers. If anyone has a problem or question we try to offer as much support as we can, sometimes even providing training for people who are new to qPCR


Finally we are dedicated, people have taken calls and emails from the other side of the world when any normal person would have been asleep! Such is the relationship with most of our customers that our team is willing to go above and beyond the call of duty to not only ensure that the job gets done, but that it gets done well.




The Team


Rob Powell PhD (Director of Research and Development)
Dr Powell works full-time for Primerdesign but remains an honorary research fellow within Southampton University School of Medicine. Primerdesign was established on his 10 years of research experience, including human virus diseases and asthma genetics. Dr Powell acted as a consultant to the life science industry on matters relating to gene quantification for several years prior to the foundation of the company.

Jim Wicks PhD (Managing Director)
Jim Wicks is responsible for the running of the company. He has a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology and has been with the company since day one. He has a passionate vision to see the company run to the very highest of standards whilst building a team of enthusiastic experts who thrive in an entrepreneurial environment.
Professor Tom Brown (Director)
Tom Brown is Professor of Chemical Biology at Southampton University and is the author of over 300 publications and patents in the nucleic acids field. Tom was the founder and head of Oswel Research Products from 1992 to 2001 and founded ATDBio in 2005.

Dr. Jo Vandesompele (Scientific advisor)
Jo Vandesompele currently works at the Centre for Medical Genetics in Ghent University, Belgium. He has (co-)authored over 50 papers in international peer-reviewed journals. He is a key opinion leader in the development methodology and technology in the field of real-time quantitative PCR. Jo has developed bio-informatic tools, such as geNorm, qBase, RTPrimerDB, arrayCGHbase, methBLAST, methPrimerDB, PGE, and Neuroblastome Gene Server.

Primerdesign Team: A team of qPCR experts who examine, design and test the primers that our customers require. They are the core of the business and usually work under the direction of Rob.

Genesig Team: We have a separate team dedicated to international sales of our genesig range of products

Sales & Marketing: As well as a lead sales manager and a marketing assistant, we have two primary,
scientifically trained salespeople who cover the UK for us, offering demonstrations and seminars as well as selling our products.

Finance & Admin:The gears of any modern working environment. All of our people are helpful and friendly which makes all our lives much more comfortable.


I hope this overview wasn't too boring, when we generate new content we will post it here!
Mean while you can find us at www.primerdesign.co.uk or www.genesig.com




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