2141: The Biotech Company Transforming Lab Automation

Mostafa ElSayed, CEO of lab automation start up Automata joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast. Spending the first half of his career working for top architecture firms, Mostafa is not your typical biotech CEO. With the initial intent to make building structures easier with robots and automation, Automata was born from an observation that automation was not taking off in a range of markets. We've seen the world of automotive manufacturing get transformed through automation, but others like pharmaceuticals and life sciences were staying behind. This is what sparked Mostafa to launch Automata, which now provides software and hardware lab-automation solutions to enable efficiencies and scale in labs, working with customers including the NHS, Novartis and Imperial College London. A recent partnership with the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust aims to develop a strategy and plan to bring the benefits of automation to a number of disease areas, including prostate and cervical cancer screening. Mostafa shares with me how his background in architecture brought him to where he is today, the challenges facing CEOs in the UK biotech industry in 2022 and his views on how the lab automation market is changing and growing.