Murray Broom

Founder Scientist, CEO, R&D program director. DNAiTECH won the 2023 Cawthron Marlborough Environment Awards, both Business Innovation award and overall Supreme CMEA winner.

DNAiTECH is leading the development of isothermal molecular technologies coupled with CRISPR Cas12a based readout on a simple paper based microfluidic system.

Co-founded Australo Ltd in 2005, Australo became the successful nanotech company Izon Science limited, a leading supplier of particle sensing and exosome separation technologies. Dr Murray Broom and Dr Stephen Sowerby pioneered TRPS (tunable resistive pulse sensing) technology, which was patented and became the basis for Izon's nanopore technology.

Developed TRPS technology and managed the R&D team for nanopore technology development and production.

Developed the qEV columns for exosome isolation

Developed the concept of Firstlight Kayaks, from prototype to commercial product. The FLK is a kayak in a backpack, a high-tech ultralight carbon fibre and high tech fabric kayaks that can be assembled and disassembled, designed for traveller's and adventurous explorers. The lightest foldable kayak in the world. A transparent version of the FLK 420 kayak won the Dupont Plastics award and was held in the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

Developed large insert yeast artificial chromosome (YAC) technology for AgResearch in New Zealand and then a consultant to the USDA at Clay Center Nebraska, leading their YAC technology development for their gene mapping programs. Implemented robotic screening of YAC clones for AgResearch and the USDA.

Led the R&D program for the positional cloning of neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (Batten disease) at the Molecular Biology Unit at the University of Otago. Batten disease is a autosomal recessive degenerative neurological disease. There are multiple variant with differing ages of onset. We had a sheep model of NCL and mapped it to be syntenic with the human CLN5 variant. Secured Welcome Trust (UK) funding and established robotic screening of YAC and cosmid clones for the NZ SheepMap program and for positional cloning of ovine Batten disease gene and Boorolla and