I’m the Founder and CEO at a number of companies, most notably NamiComi and Waku Studios.
Academic Background
In 2016, I completed my PhD in Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge, as part of the Molecular Microbiology group. My project involved expressing various proteins on the surface of Bacillus subtilis spores, including vaccine antigens, therapeutic enzymes and affinity chromatography ligands. In addition, I also hold an MSc in Biochemical Engineering from University College London and a BSc in Medical Biochemistry from King’s College London. I always thought I’d apply my scientific knowledge in the biopharmaceutical industry, but out of the blue, a recruiter found me on LinkedIn and introduced me to the world of patent law.
Patent Law
In 2018, I joined Carpmaels & Ransford as a Trainee Patent Attorney in the Life Sciences group. Carpmaels & Ransford is a full-service European intellectual property firm at the forefront of a rapidly changing IP landscape. Over the course of my studies, I have spent considerable time looking at the various phases in the development and manufacture of biopharmaceuticals, such as genetic manipulation, fermentation and downstream processing. Accordingly, I handled a variety of subject-matter within life sciences and biotechnology, such as CAR-T therapy, antibody/enzyme engineering, DNA sequencing and vaccine production. After sitting my final European Qualifying Examinations in March 2022, I decided to take a career break to spend more time with family and pursue other interests. In June 2022, I discovered that I had passed all the exams, and became a fully qualified European Patent Attorney.
Private Tuition
During my PhD, I started tutoring Maths and Sciences to 16-18 year olds in my spare time. Over the years, I have built a strong profile on First Tutors, as well as through word of mouth. Before the pandemic, all my tutoring was face-to-face, and obviously this had to stop during the lockdowns. However, I seized the opportunity to get into online tuition, which I have continued even after lockdowns ended. As a result, I am no longer limited to tutoring local students. Occassionally, I also help students with personal statements and extrance exams. Feel free to email me if you are interested in my tuition services.
Anime Localisation
One of my hobbies is watching Japanese animation (anime). I was introduced to anime back in 2006. At that time, the overseas market was severely neglected by the Japanese publishers, and so only fan-translations were available for foreign consumption. In 2009, during my BSc, I became interested in the process of producing “fansubs”. I learnt all the techniques required for video production (subtitle timing, editing, video encoding, etc), and founded a fansub group. Together with a volunteer translator, we began to produce fansubs. We grew in size substantially and at our peak in 2011-12 we were releasing around 10 episodes weekly to millions of people around the world. At around the same time, the Japanese noticed that there was a massive market overseas, and started to officially license anime to foreign companies, most notably Crunchyroll. As Crunchyroll licensed an increasing number of titles each season, fansubbing declined, since there was no longer a need for it. Using my experience as the founder of a fansub group, I applied to be a subtitle timer for Crunchyroll in 2014, and successfully joined their localisation team. To this day, I still time anime for Crunchyroll.
Waku Studios
In 2021, Bilibili reached out to me, having found my contact details via my old fansub group, wanting help with English localisation of anime for a South East Asian audience. I got in touch with some members from the fansub group, and founded the company Waku Studios for this purpose. Waku Studios is a localisation company for East Asian media, specialising in high volume localisation of anime. Currently, we are one of the suppliers handling Bilibili’s English localisation of anime.
NamiComi
In 2022, enquiries were made to Waku Studios, asking whether we could handle the localisation of Japanese comics (manga). As a fansub group, following the decline of anime fansubbing, we had branched out to other areas, such as translations of manga (scanlation). Therefore we had the expertise to handle manga localisation. Upon further research, I realised that there are many problems in the manga industry, for example: creators getting poorly paid due to inefficient monetisation methods by incumbent publishers, leading to rampant piracy. Therefore I founded the company NamiComi to provide a platform which would allow creators from around the world to upload their comics, fans to financially support creators, and frictionless localisation of comics to other languages.