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Bec obtained her PhD in organic chemistry at the University of Leeds in 2007 under the supervision of Professor Steve Marsden. Prior to this she gained her chemistry degree from the University of Bristol in 1999. As part of her undergraduate studies, she spent an industrial placement year in the Chemical Development team at Zeneca, Avonmouth and had her first experience of transferring chemistry to a scale-up lab and pilot plant at the Macclesfield site.  Following graduation, Bec joined the Chemical Development group at GSK, Stevenage (then GlaxoWellcome).  She completed pilot plant training on-site in Stevenage and developed processes that were run in GSK plants in Stevenage, Tonbridge, and Cork. After completing her PhD, she spent a year backpacking around the world, including undertaking 4 months’ post-doctoral studies at CSIRO in Melbourne.

In 2024, Bec joined Scientific Update as a Senior Process Chemist and then promoted to Scientific Director in November 2025. Prior to this, Bec spent 4 years as a Process Chemistry Team Leader in the Process R&D group at Sai Life Sciences and oversaw a number of route scouting and early phase projects, both in Manchester and India.  She was also involved in several training programs at both sites. Her previous process chemistry roles include working in the scale-up lab at Peakdale Molecular (now Concept Life Sciences) and 2 years as an industrial post-doc in the Chemical Development team at AstraZeneca, Macclesfield.  Bec has also worked in the Drug Discovery Unit at Cancer Research UK, Manchester where she gained a good understanding of medicinal chemistry and worked on an oncology project through to candidate nomination.