Sterling Snapshot | Jamie Wolstenhulme, Head of Research and Development

Jamie Wolstenhulme joined Sterling in 2015 as a Development Chemist, and is now Head of Research and Development at our Cramlington, UK facility. Read more below about how his role supports our customers and ensures a great customer experience.

Can you briefly describe your background and education?

I studied an MChem in chemistry at the University of Oxford, before going on to study for my PhD and completing my post-doctoral research at the same university.

After my PhD, I joined Sterling’s Cramlington facility (then Shasun) as a Development Chemist. I worked in this role for around three years before being promoted to a Senior Scientist. In 2020, I made the move across to new product development (NPI) and in 2023, I was promoted to Senior NPI Manager.

My roles in NPI required me to  oversee customer projects and bring together multidisciplinary teams from Sterling to work on those projects, communicating deadlines and updates to both stakeholders. My past experience has enabled me to have a good understanding of our internal teams’ processes and what they need to consider in order to make our customers’ projects a success.

In 2024, I was promoted to Head of Research and Development at the Cramlington facility.

What does your role as Head of Research and Development involve?

I lead the research and development department at the site, which includes development chemists, solid state chemists, hazard evaluation and the technology group. It’s a multidisciplinary team that falls under the research and development umbrella.

I work with experts from most departments across the Cramlington site and wider Sterling network, to ensure we are delivering the technical expertise required by our customers.

As a team, we also support a range of global activities across Sterling’s other facilities, such as offering our hazard evaluation and solid state expertise when needed.

How does your role support our customers?

Whilst my scope as Senior NPI Manager was looking at the entire project, in my current role my focus is now primarily on the technical side of the project. We have to look closely at what the customer wants from a technical offering perspective and how we can deliver that to them.

Supporting our customers is as simple as communicating with them effectively, to discover their expectations of us as their CDMO, and striving to achieve that. We work with our customers in true partnership, working to build trust through strong communication. This is what ultimately allows us to provide a great service to them.

In addition to this, often new or prospective customers seek our technical expertise when they are in early conversations with Sterling, and we’re there to give them the confidence that we can support their project requirements.

What sets Sterling apart?

The way we manage our projects makes us a very flexible organisation to work with. We accommodate and act on specific customer requests wherever possible, rather than having a more standardised rigid approach to the way we handle customer projects. No two projects brought into Sterling are the same, and that’s because no two customers are the same. It’s important that we are able to adapt our style of working to best suit our customers and their projects.

Good communication is key to developing a strong relationship with our customers and gaining their trust. We pride ourselves on being transparent with our customers. We make sure to communicate openly about timelines and budgets, and ensure that if a challenge arises during a project, we are open about it; providing them with solutions and working together in partnership to overcome it.

We try to maintain a consistent project team throughout the entire lifecycle to ensure continuity and help solidify that trust; allowing our customers to really get to know the team they are collaborating with.