Lydia Mapstone
Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, BoobyBiome
Lydia is CEO and co-founder of BoobyBiome, a company developing bacterial products for infants from the breast milk microbiome. As a microbiologist, Lydia is passionate about creating solutions in the real world for healthcare and the environment using biotechnology. Lydia has pursued this interest throughout her career; winning the Best Therapeutic prize at the international synthetic biology competition iGEM (2017), through her PhD research at University College London where she has published and presented her work widely from conferences to music festivals (2017-2022) and by winning the UCL Grand Challenges award to set up the first UK infant microbiome conference at the Institute of Child Health, Great Ormond Street hospital (2020). Lydia launched BoobyBiome with her co-founders in 2019 after participating in numerous Start-up accelerators and workshops (including BiotechYES, Imagine IF, PULSE, Panacea Stars). To date, Lydia and the BoobyBiome team have team successfully won four grant awards (from the BBSRC and Innovate UK) and completed a private equity round to carry R&D at the company forward. Keen to share her expertise, Lydia mentors iGEM and BiotechYES teams and also guest lectures to MSc students on Birkbeck University’s Bio-Business course.
