About us

PearComp got started by two computational biologists armed with experience in web and desktop software development and scientific computing in Cambridge, UK. Matias and Ben underwent a transformation from serious scientists to serious iPhone developers. They begun working on their first iPhone app and since then there has been no coming back.

The people

Matias Piipari (founding member),born and raised in Finland, has been working for his PhD in Cambridge at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Matias’ interest in software development has been sparked by his work experience in new media and scientific computing.

Alongside his computational biology research, Matias built up a strong interest in all things usability, and has developed easy to use yet powerful computational biology research software for the Mac as well as taken part in research into tools that help making web applications usable. As if a biology PhD and running a software company weren’t enough, Matias also busies himself with composing some weird and wonderful music and organising conferences. You can find out more about Matias on Twitter.

Benjamin Schuster-Böckler (founding member) came to Cambridge from Germany. He had left his home town of Munich to study Bioinformatics in Berlin before starting his PhD in Cambridge in 2004. He now lives and works in Barcelona as a post-doctoral researcher. Before turning to science, Benjamin worked as a freelance web-designer and developer, mainly focusing on PHP solutions for online shops. Benjamin’s other passion besides iPhone applications is Capoeira, which he plays whenever time permits. Ben is on twitter, too.

Markus Piipari (affiliate) started programming just for fun in the tender age of 8. He later took it seriously as a developer, consultant and software architect for about 10 years in various online media companies and their tech partners in Finland, before stepping up, or sideways, to a project manager & team lead capacity for the last couple of years. The coding chops (that started with drawing circles on paper with a turtle robot) are still there, only the languages have evolved from Logo and Basic through Assembler, C and C++ to Java, Python and Objective C.

Aside from geeking out with computers, Markus also reads, writes, eats, runs, bikes and has recurring artistic differences in musical composition with Matias.

email: info@pearcomp.com
Post: 86 Cavendish Road
CB1 3AF Cambridge
Cambridgeshire