Our goal is to enable the analysis of anything, by anyone, anywhere.
Welcome to Oxford Nanopore Technologies
You’ll soon be joining a company that is working towards all of these goals. With your help we aim to grow and evolve as a company, and realise our ambitions. In turn, your work with us should help you grow too — both professionally and personally. We can’t wait to start working with you and find out more about you.
Oxford Nanopore has developed a new generation of DNA/RNA sequencing technology. It is the only sequencing technology that offers real-time analysis (for rapid insights), in fully scalable formats from pocket to population scale, that can analyse native DNA or RNA and sequence any length of fragment to achieve short to ultra-long read lengths.
Dr Gordon Sanghera has led our company since it was founded in 2005. In that time we’ve outgrown the research labs of Oxford University to become a team of over 750 working across three continents. We have customers in more than 100 countries, and in September 2021 Oxford Nanopore Technologies was listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Listen to Gordon Sanghera explain why he hires people with a diverse skillset
What is nanopore technology?
In the natural world, protein nanopores are tiny holes that act as gateways across membranes. All Oxford Nanopore sequencing devices work by passing an electric current through engineered nanopores which have been embedded in synthetic electro-resistant membranes. As molecules such as DNA or RNA move through the nanopore, the electric current is disrupted, producing a characteristic ‘squiggle’. Our devices monitor this squiggle, which is then decoded, revealing the DNA or RNA sequence in real time.
Our inspiration
As you walk through the door of our home and head office on Oxford Science Park, you’ll notice an array of famous faces adorning the walls. This is an eclectic mix of brilliant talents inspired our founders. They are people known for innovation, creativity and a determination to turn their visions and ideas into reality. In their own way, all of them were industry disruptors. We like to think we are too.
Here’s just a few of the faces you might spot: Nikola Tesla was one of the founding fathers of modern electrical systems. His true impact on our world has become more obvious with time. The serial innovator tackled everything from hydro-electric power to X-rays, even predicting the Internet of Things a century before it appeared. Blondie is just one of several punk icons you’ll find on display. The iconic group is a reminder of a music scene that felt rebellious, but quickly grew a big community. We think science and music are not so different. JFK and his moon-shot mission inspired our ground-breaking work with NASA. This saw Oxford Nanopore’s MinION device used in experiments onboard the International Space Station. David Bowie coined the phrase “tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming”. The Starman has provided the soundtrack to our evolution, from ground control to our debut on the London Stock Exchange in 2021.
Nikola Tesla
Blondie
The moonshot mission
David Bowie
Our products
Our products are fully scalable, from pocket to population scale, enabling scientific researchers to answer questions about the biology of people, plants, animals, pathogens and environments. It is also increasingly being used in ‘applied’ settings such as clinical diagnostics, epidemiology and food safety. It is our goal to enable users to answer a wide range of important biological questions that solve real-world challenges, whether in healthcare, epidemiology, environmental science, food and agriculture or education.
MinION
Flongle
GridION
PromethION
VolTRAX
PromethION 2 Solo
PromethION 2
Nanopore devices in action
The first complete sequence of a human genome
Nanopore sequencing was instrumental, along with other sequencing technologies, in completing the remaining 8% of the human genome which had been inaccessible for decades. These regions are highly-repetitive and would have been impossible to resolve without Oxford Nanopore Technologies' ultra-long sequencing reads. Resolving these large and complex regions has enabled the Telomere-to-Telomere consortium to uncover new information about the genetics of human health and disease. In addition to spanning these complex regions, nanopore sequencing also provided new insights into methylation in these regions.
The future potential of real-time, intraoperative CNS tumour classification
Luna Djirackor (Oslo University Hospital, Norway) has shown how nanopore methylation analysis shows the future potential to classify brain tumours in as little as 91 minutes – quick enough for results to be returned to the operating table during brain surgery. Strikingly, in 60% of the samples sequenced in the study, the information obtained would have altered the pre-planned surgical strategy, demonstrating how this approach has the potential to significantly improve surgical outcomes in future.
COVID-19 and the Nanopore Community
Nanopore Community members have been on the frontline across the world during the Covid-19 pandemic. They have used our sequencing devices to track the virus and identify mutations in over 80 countries, providing critical analyses on the transmission and biology of SARS-CoV-2 to inform public health measures. The Community has a long history with supporting outbreak surveillance. They were on the ground during the Ebola (2014) and Zika (2016) outbreaks and continue to track the genomic epidemiology of pathogens such as TB, yellow fever and influenza globally.
Hear from the nanocore
Our team is growing in number each month and we’re proud that over 50 nationalities are now represented across our company. To help you get to know the people who work for us, and the jobs they do, we asked a few of the team to introduce themselves and give their thoughts on working at Oxford Nanopore.
What to expect on day one
We’ll be in touch with you with the arrangements for your first day, whether it’s in person, or you’re joining remotely. Wondering what to wear? If you’re joining our manufacturing team, your PPE (personal protective equipment) will be ready for you. Everywhere else it’s smart/casual unless you’re meeting our customers.
Your manager will meet you on your first day either on site or online and will spend time with you to help you get oriented and settle in. IT will have already set up your email address and you’ll have an IT induction to introduce you to your kit and help you to navigate your way around our various systems and platforms. You’ll also join a HR-led induction session which will give you a wealth of information to get you started.
The first few days and weeks of any new job is all about settling in and becoming productive as quickly as possible. To help you, your manager will discuss a full 30-day, 60-day and 90-day plan designed to help you learn your way around the business. Above all, ask lots of questions. You’ll soon realise that everyone is friendly and genuinely wants to help you.
Rewards and benefits
Oxford Nanopore offers an appealing Total Reward comprising a market-competitive base salary, an attractive bonus and share plans.
We support employee health and wellbeing ensuring our employees are covered in times of need. These include maternity/paternity benefits, sickness and life insurances, market aligned retirement provisions and services to help with mental, physical and financial wellbeing.
Having fun with our colleagues is important at Oxford Nanopore and we run various social events throughout the year to champion this.
We strive to create a results-driven and diverse culture in which employees are encouraged and supported to manage their work/life balance through flexible and smart working practices.
The latest chapter
We’ll leave you with a quick glimpse of what we’ve been up to recently. To mark our launch on the London Stock Exchange last autumn, we hosted a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) event where some of the next generation of scientists were able to meet some of our team, find out more about our work, and even test our devices.
We wish you all the best as you prepare to join us here at Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Please do keep in touch and ask questions, and why not connect to our community on LinkedIn to follow all our latest news.
See you soon!
STEM event at London Stock Exchange
Discover more
Applications
DNA sequencing, RNA and gene expression analysis, and in the future, analysis of proteins.
