About
Engineering the sampling layer for molecular monitoring.
Biota Trace develops instruments and connected technologies for more systematic, scalable and context-aware molecular sampling across air and water.
Founded in 2024, the company brings together more than two decades of scientific instrumentation experience with engineering, software and molecular biology expertise.
The company
Built on two decades of instrumentation experience.
Biota Trace was established as a spin-out from Platform Kinetics Ltd, bringing with it more than two decades of experience developing scientific instruments from early concept through to manufacture and field deployment.
The company was created around a simple observation: molecular analysis has advanced rapidly, while the way environmental samples are collected has received far less attention.
Biota Trace focuses on that gap. Our technology is designed to improve how samples are collected, preserved and connected to the laboratories, methods and scientific expertise already in place, while we continue to build greater automation and analytical capability into the wider monitoring workflow.
How we work
Built across the disciplines the problem needs.
Environmental monitoring sits across engineering, software and molecular biology. Biota Trace brings those capabilities together so that instruments are designed not only for the conditions in which they will operate, but for the samples, data and analytical workflows they need to support.
That integrated approach allows us to move from a technical idea to a deployable monitoring capability without passing each part of the problem between separate suppliers.
Who leads it
Founded by an instrumentation engineer.
Biota Trace was founded by Dr Tom Myers(LinkedIn profile), who has spent more than twenty years in research, development and scientific instrumentation, taking new technologies from early concept through to products used by research, industry and the public sector.
That experience shapes how Biota Trace develops its technology: not simply to perform technically, but to operate reliably at the water’s edge, on exposed sites and through long, unattended deployments.
Where we are
Otley, West Yorkshire.
Biota Trace is based at Wharfebank Mills in Otley, near Leeds, with office, laboratory, engineering and production facilities on the banks of the River Wharfe.
The location gives the team direct access to the environments in which much of the technology is intended to operate, while keeping engineering, laboratory and production capability together on one site.
