Matthew Cockerill

Matt Cockerill – A sourdough-fermenting, backyard-wasabi-growing culinary adventurer, Matt began his career as a science publisher.

Matt is the Co-founder and CEO of ckbk, a digital subscription service offering access to the full content of hundreds of the world’s best cookbooks. ckbk is often described as “Spotify for Recipes”.

He studied Natural Sciences at Clare College, Cambridge, followed by PhD research on the cell cycle in the lab of Nobel prize-winning biochemist Tim Hunt.

He began his digital publishing career with BioMedNet, an early community website for scientific researchers which was sold in 1997 to Elsevier. In 1999 he co-founded BioMed Central, a new publisher which pioneered the then, revolutionary Open Access publishing model.

BioMed Central was acquired by Springer Science+Business Media in 2008, and Matt ran BioMed Central as an independent unit within Springer from 2008-2013 and served on Springer’s management board.

Most recently he served as a non-exec director for the Biochemical Society’s publishing arm, Portland Press and he is currently on the board for the ISRCTN organization, and was formerly a founding board member of OASPA.

Next up, cookbooks! He is based in London, and when he is not working, cooking, or drinking coffee, he likes to burn off the excess calories with marathons and endurance swimming.

Favorite foods: Hamachi nigiri, crispy pork belly, and homemade waffles.