Start-up Festival

Lilian Alcaraz

VP, Early Innovation Partnering, Johnson & Johnson Innovation

Lilian leads the Early Innovation Partnering team for EMEA through the identification, incubation, due diligence, negotiations, execution and on-boarding of high-impact partnerships and collaborations for J&J. He has experience in sourcing and transacting across a wide range of collaboration and licensing opportunities from small molecule and antibody asset deals, through to platform technologies. Prior to joining J&J, Lilian gained over 18 years’ experience in Drug Discovery as a medicinal chemist at Charles River, Galapagos (Argenta Discovery) and AstraZeneca. Lilian holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at the ULP (Strasbourg, France), and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of York (UK).

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Sian Billson

Head of Life Sciences, Stratagem IPM Ltd

Sian joined Stratagem in 2024 to lead the Chemistry and Life Sciences Patents team, bringing with her more than 25 years of experience from the patents department at pharmaceutical giant GSK. Throughout her career, she has developed and delivered global, commercially driven IP strategies that align tightly with business goals - factoring in patents, regulatory exclusivity, and investment value.

She’s worked across a wide range of corporate transactions, from due diligence and licensing to acquisitions and spinouts. Her expertise is particularly valuable to SMEs preparing their patent portfolios for partnerships with larger companies. Sian has deep expertise in the pharmaceutical space, particularly around assets in development or already on the market. Her work covers areas such as Orange Book listing (in both the US and China), and strategic planning around patent expiry.

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Davide Bommarito

Senior Vice President | Early Stage Banking Life Sciences & Healthcare, HSBC Innovation Banking

Davide heads the Life Sciences & Healthcare early-stage vertical at HSBC Innovation Banking in London. He joined HSBC Innovation Banking as a Senior Vice President to expand the bank's healthcare footprint in the UK and to provide commercial banking services to disruptive Biotech, Biopharma and Tech Bio companies at different growth stages (pre-seed, seed & series A). Prior, Davide was a Vice President in the SVB UK Early-Stage Healthcare division. Davide is a former scientist with advanced degrees (Ph.D. in Immunology & M.Sc. in Medical Biotechnology) and experience in both the financial/banking sector and medical research sector including roles at world-leading research institutions such as King's College London (KCL) and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI)/Harvard.

Oliver Colville

Investor

Oliver Colville currently works with a US specialist hedge fund that invests only in small and mid size biotech companies at clinical or commercial stage. Previously he was an Associate at the Apeiron Investment Group, focussing on early-stage biotech building and investing in the UK and US. Additionally, he has also spent time in life science VC at Fountain Healthcare Partners. Previously, Oliver was at Torreya, a boutique Investment Bank, working on M&A/licensing transactions and equity raises for biotech/pharma clients. He has degrees from Imperial College London and Newcastle University where he studied Cancer Biology and Pharmacology.

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Marco Delise

Entrepreneurship and Business Development Director, Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst

Before joining Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst (SBC) in 2022, Marco spent three years at alternative-protein start-up, Better Dairy, having joined the founders as their first hire. As Head of R&D, he led the science team and helped the start-up grow from pre-seed to £22m Series A investment. As Innovation Lead, he organised and managed the building of a new lab and office facility in East London and helped devise new scientific strategies.
Marco holds a BSc and MSc in Biomedical Engineering with a focus on data science. He also holds a PhD in Synthetic Biology with a focus on protein design. Before joining Better Dairy, he was part of the Entrepreneur First programme.

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Sarah Fryer

Board Director, Institute of Clinical Research

Sarah Fryer is a Director on the Board of the ICR, a membership-led, not for profit, independent association for clinical research professionals, in commercial and non-commercial environments.

The ICR has three guiding principles: Developing Professionals; Sharing Knowledge; and Raising Standards.  It promotes good relations with other healthcare related groups, including the BIA, and provides:

• a home for professionals in Clinical Research,

• a source of Clinical Research information including forums for discussion of key issues impacting clinical research
• opportunities for learning and development to enhance professional competence
• a representative voice for Clinical Researchers in consultations especially with Regulators and Government
• promotion of the profile of Clinical Research enhancing public confidence and understanding of clinical research

Sarah has worked in clinical development for more than 30 years, with the last 20 years focusing on clinical QA.  The majority of her career has been spent working in contract research and consultancy roles, supporting early phase biopharma companies as they move from research into clinical development.  She was co-founder of Gregory Fryer Associates and founder of QRC Consultants and is now working as an independent GCP QA consultant as Director of Green End Barns Consulting Ltd. 

She has been a long term member of the ICR and is also a Fellow of the Research Quality Assurance and a member of the Royal Society of Biology.

Her particular interest is the importance of quality and regulatory compliance in clinical research and brings this interest with enthusiasm to her role on the Board of the ICR.

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Rebecca Godfrey

COO , ExpressionEdits

Dr Rebecca Godfrey is the COO at ExpressionEdits, a Cambridge-based biotechnology company optimizing protein expression using AI and proprietary intronization technology. At ExpressionEdits Rebecca provides leadership and strategic direction to all business, financial and operational aspects of the organisation, leading on all commercial partnership activities.

Rebecca’s extensive track record of building highly successful organizations, teams, and systems, covers all stages of the product lifecycle, across a wide variety of therapeutic modalities and in all regions worldwide, including emerging markets. Rebecca has held Director level roles at Eisai and AbbVie and the role of Global Head Regional PV Excellence at Roche. Rebecca’s most recent roles include COO at healthtech start-up, OKKO Health, and Research Chief of Staff for the clinical-stage gene therapy biotech, Freeline Therapeutics (now Spur Therapeutics).

Rebecca also serves as Chair of the Board of Teens Unite fighting cancer and is author of the best-selling book ‘The Leadership Vaccine: Drive innovation, increase efficiency and build resilience in highly regulated industries’.

 

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Jason Goldstein

Co-Founder, NG Bio

Besides co-leading the company's operations, Jason heads the strategic arm of NG Bio. He defines the venture builder's business development and investment strategy, including previous angel investments in Cellesce (bioprocessing), HexagonFab (biosensors) and LightOx (oncology).

Jason has worked with entrepreneurs across the life sciences as an advisor and angel investor for over five years. Before starting NG Bio, he helped founders in the biotech and mental health space go from ideation to funding and beyond. Prior to his entrepreneurial experience, Jason worked for EY in London and Tokyo, supporting Japanese biotechs and pharmaceutical companies with restructuring and M&A.

Jason holds an MBA from London Business School and is a Chartered Accountant. He graduated with a first-class bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Loughborough University.

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Sarah Grant

Chief Executive Officer, Stratagem IPM Ltd

Sarah has been an integral part of Stratagem for over 14 years, rising to CEO in 2022. She is deeply aligned with the firm’s values, particularly its emphasis on partnering with clients to provide comprehensive, strategic IP support. She is passionate about making IP accessible and commercially relevant - helping clients understand and leverage their IP for growth and success. She understands that how to commercialise and leverage innovation can be intimidating and confusing, particularly for new founders. Her job is to make the journey as smooth as possible, with clear jargon-free advice. She works with clients across the biotech fields to build and support their intellectual property strategy so that they can reach their commercial goals.

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Danuta Jeziorska

Biotech CEO and Industry Leader in Functional Genomics, Independent

Danuta is a deep tech entrepreneur. With more than 16 years of experience working in the field, Danuta has deep expertise in gene regulation, transcription, epigenetics, 3D genome analysis and bioinformatics.

She was a CEO & Co-Founder of Nucleome Therapeutics until April 2024. In acknowledgement of her achievements at Nucleome, Danuta was recently recognised as an outstanding leader in the biotech sector by leading scientific journal Nature Biotechnology. She currently sits on the BIA’s Genomics Advisory Committee, holds an Honorary position at the University of Oxford, has a PhD in Systems Biology and a BSc in Biotechnology. Prior to Nucleome she founded Innovation Forum Oxford, for which she was recognised as one of the top Movers and Shakers in BioBusiness in 2018.

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Elizabeth Klein

Investment Director, Calculus Capital

No bio provided

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Phil Masterson

Associate Director, Ventures, Cancer Research Horizons

Phil has a BSc in Cell Biology from the University of Essex, and a PhD in Virology from the University of Cambridge. After a post-doc position at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) in London, Phil spent a number of years managing R&D programmes in the biotech industry. 

He moved into technology transfer in 2003 when he joined Cancer Research Horizons (formerly called Cancer Research Technology). Since that time, he has built up extensive experience of managing and commercialising healthcare technologies from academic origins, focusing in recent years on the creation of innovative and transformative oncology ventures, from ideation to launch.  

He has served as a Board Director or Observer for a range of start-up companies including Artios Pharma, Monte Rosa Therapeutics, Infinitopes, MyT BIO, Elaitra and Oncodrug.

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Santiago Matheus

Managing Partner, LQD

Santiago directs the day-to-day activities at LQD, drawing on his experience as an executive, angel investor and founder, as well as a product and strategy consultant. He works with entrepreneurs to understand their ambitions and provides support across the various stages of venture-building.

Prior to founding LQD, Santiago held a range of operational and consultative roles in companies including IBM, IDEO, Method Design, AVG Technologies. He is happiest at the intersection of technology, business, and design, and is passionate about deep tech’s promise to improve the world.

Santiago has held or holds various NED and board seats at early-stage companies in the UK and in charities based in his native country, Ecuador.

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Jonathan Nash

Investment Principle, LifeArc Ventures

Jonathan joined LifeArc as an Investment Principal at LifeArc Ventures in 2024. He is responsible for new investments and managing existing portfolio companies.

Prior to joining LifeArc, Jon was an Associate with the Biotechnology team at M Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Merck KGaA, where he was responsible for new investments and existing portfolio companies with a focus on therapeutics and life sciences. Prior to this, he was an Associate at UBS in the Healthcare Investment Banking Group in London, as well as a Life Science Specialist at L.E.K. Consulting.

Jon started his career as a doctor in London and holds Degrees in Medicine and Neuroscience from Imperial College London.

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Pahini Pandya

CEO and Founder, Panakeia

Dr Pahini Pandya is the CEO and Founder of Panakeia, a pioneering AI-driven molecular profiling company. Panakeia’s AI-driven software provides comprehensive multi-omic information (DNA, RNA, protein, metabolite changes) directly from routinely used images of tissues and cells in minutes instead of days or weeks. The software enables same-day treatment decision-making in the clinic and fast-tracks drug development for biopharma without the need for time and resource intensive laboratory tests.

Trained as a cancer researcher. Pahini spent the last decade furthering translational research in the field. She pursued a PhD in cancer biophysics at King’s College London, a postdoc at the University of Cambridge and has several publications in top journals.

Educated at the Stanford and Cambridge business schools, Pahini has also held several leadership positions across entrepreneurial organisations and helped numerous start-ups commercialise research. She has been recognised as Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum, and received multiple awards for entrepreneurship.

Carolyn Porter

Chief Executive Officer, Outrun Therapeutics

Carolyn has over 25 years’ experience in career spanning roles in biotech and pharmaceutical companies, technology transfer and academia, and is currently CEO of Outrun Therapeutics, a spin out of the University of Dundee.  She has held Board roles including CEO and NED roles in 7 biotech companies developing novel therapies across multiple indications including in oncology and neurology.  She is also currently a NED representing Innovate UK on the Board of the Cell & Gene Therapy Catapult.  Organisations she has previously worked for include Novartis, Chiron, Oxford University and Ernst & Young.  Carolyn has a PhD in Immunology, BSC in Pharmacology and an MBA.

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Andy Richards

Investor

Andy is an entrepreneur and investor with an established track record in founding and scaling up innovative Life-science, Biotechnology and Digital Health companies in the UK. He is currently Chairman of Congenica, Closed Loop Medicine, Arecor Therapeutics plc, Ieso Digital Health and Owlstone Medical. He is a director of Cancer Research Horizons (the commercial board of CR-UK) and the Scale-Up institute and is an advisor to several investment funds, including Cambridge Innovation Capital, the UCL Technology Fund, and the CRUK Seed Fund. He is a council member of the UKRI MRC.

Andy is a Cambridge Graduate with a PhD in Chemistry and an early career spanning positions with ICI (now AstraZeneca) and PA Technology. He was a founder and executive director of Chiroscience plc until its merger with Celltech in 1999 and since that time he has founded, invested in and helped to scale more than 30 innovative ventures including companies such as Vectura, Arakis, Cambridge Biotechnology Ltd and Geneservice. Andy is also a founder member of the Cambridge Angels.

Andy is passionate about science and the translation of science to do good for society. The Life-sciences and Healthcare sectors provide the perfect arena for translating science into technology that can help people around the world. He received a CBE for services to investment in life-sciences in 2015.

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Renos Savva

Head of Innovation and Venture Development, Discovery Park

Renos has experience on both sides of the investment deal table, both with Discovery Park Ventures in scouting and diligence and as a successfully exited tech inventor/ co-founder with Domainex, among other life science stealth startup plays.

He developed and convened the Bio-business programme for University of London postgraduates,

which inspired and guided business minded students and postdocs to follow their personal star as startup founders, and into ecosystem specialist roles.

Renos has recently devised the DPV investment thesis as principal for the next phase of the fund.

Renos now leverages his insights and connections as a mentor to founders and adviser to startups, at Discovery Park and via his external venture builder affiliations.

Through network enabling programmes and series, he empowers entrepreneurial tech founders at Discovery Park: Delivering both the Discovery Spark programme, and, with the Kent Barclays Eagle Labs the Greenhouse incubator for CoLaB based founders. These initiatives emphasise insightful ecosystem driven commercial sustainability mindsets to enable investment readiness and visibility to DPV and its partners.

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Oliver Sexton

Investment Director, Future Planet Capital

Oliver is an Investment Director at UKI2S. Specialising in life science investments he has managed the enlarged £33m engineering biology sub-fund since its inception in 2014. He has invested in a broad range of companies in sectors as diverse as therapeutic, agritech and clean biotech.

He sits on multiple boards and has overseen exits including the £85m sale of Quethera to Astellas. He is also a member of the Future Planet Capital ESG steering group.

Prior to joining UKI2S, Oliver worked at the venture fund Imperial Innovations as well as other roles in the industry. He has a background in strategy analysis and consultancy including roles in New York and has a masters from the University of Bristol and commenced a PhD in bioremediation at the University of Nottingham.

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Prashant Shah

CEO and CO-Founder, o2h Group

A serial entrepreneur having begun a career with the Strategy group of at Accenture followed by co-founding two companies in the technology and life sciences sector. The second of these companies focused on drug discovery was acquired by a public company. Prashant co-founded o2h Ventures which is involved in seeding, incubating and investing in early stage life science and technology companies. Prashant has a BEng, MSc and an MPhil in Management.

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Roland Sinker

Chief Executive , Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Roland has served as Chief Executive of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) since 2015.

The trust is a high performing centre for clinical care and patient experience, running the UK's most digitally developed hospitals and making award-winning use of digital systems to improve patient care.  From 2018 to 2021, he was the accountable officer for the integrated care system in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. The integrated care system and the hospital trust are focused on innovation and improvement, working alongside universities and industry to deliver this.

Aligned with these roles, Roland chaired the Shelford Group of ten teaching hospitals from 2020–2023; and in March 2023 was appointed as the NHS England National Director for Life Sciences. This position works alongside the Innovation, Research and Life Sciences (IRLS) team in NHSE to engage national innovation partners, local systems, industry, and research charities to develop a clear blueprint for how the NHS can best support, and benefit from, a strong life sciences ecosystem. During March 2023 Roland became a Governor of The Health Foundation, focussed on innovation and life sciences.

Before joining CUH, Roland was Chief Executive, Chief Operating Officer and Strategy Director at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. He began his career in the field of corporate law at Linklaters, based in London and Hong Kong, and later moved to McKinsey to work in strategy consultancy.

 

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Lennart Spindler

Senior Analyst, SV Health Investors

Lennart joined SV in 2024 as a Senior Analyst in the DDF team. Prior to joining SV, Lennart was as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge, alongside project work at Syncona Partners, Start Codon, and Cambridge Enterprise.

During his Postdoc, Lennart was a research lead in the lab of Dr Caroline Williams-Gray & Prof Roger Barker, where he investigated peripheral versus central inflammation and neurotransmitter system dysregulation as drivers of proteinopathy and disease progression in Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. He received his PhD in Clinical Neurosciences and has published in high impact journals (PNAS, Brain, Neurocritical Care, Neuroimage). During his studies at Cambridge he co-founded the Queens’ College Entrepreneurship Centre.

In his free time, Lennart enjoys playing the bagpipes, hiking off-grid, taking (bad) film photographs, and reviving classic cars.

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Rebecca Todd

Investment Director, Longwall Ventures

Rebecca began venture investing in 2006 while at Oxford Capital, where she took responsibility for the Oxford Gateway Funds’ investments into healthcare and life science companies, and went on to become Director, Healthcare Ventures at Imperial Innovations (now part of IP Group). Her earlier career was as a marketing consultant to pharmaceutical and life science technology companies. Rebecca has a PhD in Genetics from Nottingham University and an MBA from Oxford University. She joined Longwall Ventures after a couple of years sabbatical break spent exploring South America in a VW camper van and focuses predominantly on medical technology opportunities. 

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Özgür Tuncer

CEO & Executive Director, Stablepharma Ltd

Özgür has over two decades of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry with deep expertise in executive leadership, strategy, M&A and investments. In addition to being the CEO & Executive Director of Stablepharma, Özgür is an investment partner with Ascension Ventures and co-founder of the Ascension Life Fund. In that capacity, he is involved at board-level in early-stage healthcare and life sciences companies in the UK.

Özgür in a Non-Executive Director at Cambridge-based precision cancer company TailorBio and fertility company ExSeed Health, as well as being a Board Advisor to Pangaea Data. Most recently, he was Global Vice President in IQVIA, leading company’s Financial Investors practice. In that role, Özgür was involved in more than 300 industry-shaping transactions with valuations of $100m-10bn+, working with world’s leading Private Equity & Venture Capital investors.

Özgür spent over 6 years in USA working for Pfizer in New York and Pharmacia in New Jersey before moving into management consultancy. In Pfizer, he was in charge of portfolio strategy and investments in infectious diseases globally. During that time, he was deeply involved in developing anti-viral and anti-bacterial products. Furthermore, Özgür was part of a small strategy task force who led Pfizer’s entry into vaccine space, acquiring PowderMed in 2006, a UK vaccine company.

Prior to joining IMS Health (IQVIA), Özgür was the founding Managing Partner of SARGA Associates with offices in New Jersey, USA and London, UK. He has also worked with several NGOs including Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) in Geneva, UNITAID, Clinton Foundation/Clinton Health Access Initiative and the Gates Foundation.

Özgür has lived and worked in the UK, USA, France and Turkey. He holds an MSc in Management Sciences from the London School of Economics and a BSc in Business Administration from the Middle East Technical University (Turkey).

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James Wong

Ventures Senior Portfolio Manager, Foresight Group

James is a Ventures Senior Portfolio Manager based in Foresight Group's London office, where he leads the portfolio management of venture-backed healthcare and life sciences companies.

Prior to Foresight, James worked at Oxford Science Enterprises and Mercia Asset Management. James holds an MPhil in Computational Biology from the University of Cambridge.

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