Team Member

Dr Phil Botham is a member of RSA’s leadership team, providing advice on organisational development and skills recruitment. He is currently Principal Science Advisor for Syngenta’s Global Product Safety organisation, based at the company’s international research centre at Jealott’s Hill. From 2013 to 2017, he was the Global Head of Product Safety for Syngenta, managing a team of over 300 experts in human and environmental safety based mainly in the UK, North America and Brazil.

Previously he held a number of senior leadership roles in Syngenta and its legacy companies in the area of human safety and toxicology, from 1980 until 2007 at the Central Toxicology Laboratory in Alderley Park and from 2007 at Jealott’s Hill. He has a broad background in chemical and agrochemical human safety and has specific technical expertise in acute toxicity, sensitisation and immunotoxicology. He also has expertise in the use of animal models and epidemiology in the study of environmental influences on the development of Parkinson’s disease.

He has published more than 140 peer-reviewed papers and was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists in 2001 in recognition of his publication record in the field of toxicology. In 2017 he joined the European Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals (ECETOC) Scientific Committee and he was also appointed as a member of the UK Food Standards Agency Committee on Toxicity (CoT). Phil has been a member of the British Toxicology Society (BTS) for over 30 years and was appointed as a Fellow of the Society in 2006. In 2022, he was elected to the position of Vice President of the BTS.