Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Oxford HighQ

Oxford HighQ is a spin-out company from the University of Oxford’s Departments of Materials and Chemistry. It is developing nanoparticle sensing instruments that are up to 10,000 times more sensitive than available optical sensing technologies. The company has engineered a way of producing large-scale, repeatable, high precision optical microcavities for the first time.

These sensors will enable new tools to be created in pharmaceutical and medical research, as well as food and water monitoring. This technology could prove a step-change in performance for chemical and nanoparticle sensing.

Aurélien Trichet is Co-Founder and CTO at Oxford HighQ, managing the R&D team and directing technology development. He became an SME Leader in 2020 and is looking forward to using the programme. He says: “This opportunity is ideal for me. It will allow me to move from a heavy academic skillset to a more business and technology management one. The workshop, coaching and mentoring will all help me make this transition.”

Oxford HighQ is aiming to transition from R&D to mass production in 2021. Its first product provides a way to measure drug loading and delivery profiles as well as particle size for nanomedicine applications. As a consequence, researchers within academic institutions, SMEs and pharmaceutical companies will have better quality assurance procedures, a crucial requirement in this valuable industry.

Research shows that 23% of the world’s energy is lost through tribological contact, which is the wear and friction generated by interacting surfaces in motion.

Tribosonics Limited, a Sheffield company, has developed sensing technology to tackle wear, friction and lubrication issues in rotating equipment. The business venture designs, manufactures and installs high-end, often bespoke, ultrasonic sensing and data capture platforms across many industrial sectors.

Tribosonics inserts sensors within bearings, seals and other moving parts to create smart components that can measure and monitor tribological contact as well as other performance and structural metrics.  The generated data helps companies to extend plant life, prevent critical failures, shorten maintenance cycles and reduce energy use through improved operational efficiency. 

Christina King is the Chief Commercial Officer for Tribosonics, responsible for building innovative commercial partnerships with large corporations. Christina joined the SME Leaders programme in 2021 and says “I want to gain business insights and build networks that will help develop my personal journey, as well as scale-up the company.”

In 2020, Tribosonics secured over £1 million of equity investment from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, via Mercia Asset Management. This will enable the company to double in size over the next three years. It is now looking to further expand its patented ultrasonic sensing technologies into global industrial markets.

Lightpoint Medical develops molecular imaging and sensing technologies to help surgeons detect cancer in real time during surgery. In spite of the technological advances in robotic surgery, surgeons still depend on their eyesight to detect cancer intra-operatively. As a result, surgeons sometimes leave cancer behind or remove more healthy tissue than needed.

The company’s award-winning SENSEI® technology, a miniaturised intra-operative cancer detection probe, gives surgeons a chance to fully remove cancer in one procedure, while retaining healthy tissue. It can be used across many major cancer types including stomach, colorectal, breast, prostate, and lung cancer.

Dr Kunal Vyas is the Head of Research at Lightpoint Medical, responsible for evaluating new technologies, overseeing research projects and developing the company’s intellectual property (IP) portfolio. Kunal joined the SME Leaders programme in 2021. He says “I hope that the programme’s strategic innovation management initiative will maximise my performance as we commercialise and scale-up. I will also benefit from access to workshops and speaker events on topics such as IP management and pitching.”

In 2021, SENSEI® received CE mark, enabling it to be sold in the European Economic Area. Lightpoint Medical has begun multi-centre clinical trials with the probe. The company will now transition from being an R&D-focused organisation into a commercial enterprise.

The problem

Loudspeakers are used in billions of devices worldwide including smartphones, laptops, tablets and smart speakers. For nearly 100 years, the dominant technology to reproduce sound has been the dynamic loudspeaker. One of the main mechanisms it uses is the voice coil transducer, a very simple device that also has significant drawbacks in terms of electrics, mechanics and acoustics.

The solution

Dominika Behounik is Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer of Arya Audio Labs. The company was formed with Arthur Marker to develop audio products. One of these was the AirBlade transducer. Instead of trying to incrementally improve a 100-year old imperfect design, it approached the problem from a different, disruptive angle.

Rather than using a heavy diaphragm with separate voice coil, the AirBlade transducer incorporates ultralight ring-shaped foil elements arranged in layers with conductive traces of aluminium bonded to it. When an electrical signal is applied, opposite layers of the diaphragm either move towards or away from each other depending on the direction of the current, thereby moving air and creating sound. 

By distributing the diaphragm area over several layers and implementing a curved shape, AirBlade avoids the typical beaming problem of traditional drivers while achieving higher power handling, reduced distortion and better air coupling due to its large diaphragm surface area. The transducer’s radiation pattern can also be tailored to specific requirements of the application it is driving.

Arya Audio Labs has manufactured in-house since its inception. It uses advanced prototyping tools including 3D printing, 5 axis CNC machines and state-of-the-art measurement facilities. The company started shipping the AirBlade directly to customers at the beginning of 2020 and it proved a very popular seller. It is now looking for ways to improve and speed up the processes to help deliver highest quality products.

The audio market has been on the rise for the past couple of years, with an abundance of streaming services available as well as vinyl records experiencing a come-back. The company’s technology has been especially well received at the high end of the market and in the automotive audio sectors, two markets that are worth over £1 billion a year alone.

Dominika says of the Enterprise Fellowship: “I come from an academic background, where it’s natural to focus your efforts on developing technology and forget that you are actually trying to run a business! The Fellowship has given me an excellent opportunity to shift that mindset, and strike a good balance between the two.”

Traction 

2018 – Arya Audio Labs debuts at High End Munich as a Newcomer
2018 – First product, RevOpod, starts shipping
2019 – RevOpod receives Best of 2018 award by Mono and Stereo
2019 – AirBlade loudspeaker starts shipping to original equipment manufacturing partners
2020 – AirBlade loudspeaker becomes available for end customers

Visit their website: www.arya-audio.com   

Grakn Labs have developed a system called Grakn, an open-source intelligent database. Grakn handles large amounts of complex data through knowledge engineering – commonly known as knowledge graphs. It is the world’s first database with a schema powered by a knowledge representation system and uses a query language called Graql to enable this.

Grakn’s database technology provides the knowledge base foundation for artificial intelligence systems used in various industries, including financial services, defence and security, life sciences, robotics and cyber security.

Tomás Sabat is the Chief Operating Officer at Grakn Labs, responsible for generating sales, marketing and finance. He develops strategic relationships with clients who can benefit from Grakn’s ability to easily model, query and analyse complex information in a simple and logical way.

Tomás joined the SME Leaders programme in 2018. He says: “The scheme has given us an introduction to investors and provided leadership and media training. It has also supplied us with networking opportunities with other engineering businesses in the UK.”

Grakn Labs has doubled its staff in two years and raised £2.4 million of funding. It is now ready to produce at scale, both in terms of commercial adoption as well as scaling its technology. 

MySense Ltd has created a wellbeing analytics platform for people with declining health, enabling them to live independently in their own homes. Its system uses a network of wearable and fixed sensors in a property. Using artificial intelligence and the internet of things, the platform learns a person’s pattern of behaviour, while building up an informed picture of a user’s health condition.

Thousands of data points track a user’s nutrition, hydration, independence, activity and overall sense of wellbeing. A smartwatch records heart rate and step count, while an easy-to-use dashboard displays the information, highlighting any unusual patterns and triggering a notification to a nominated responder.

MySense monitoring data doesn’t record video or sound as there are no cameras or microphones. The real-time data allows family members, friends, clinicians and care givers to stay informed about a person’s wellbeing. Detailed evaluations through use have shown significant reductions in GP appointments, 999 calls and unplanned hospital admissions.

Lucie Glenday is Co-Founder and Group CEO of MySense. Lucie joined the SME Leaders programme in 2021 and is looking forward to two specific programme initiatives. She says “Having a mentor will allow me to talk through decisions the company is making and how to position these in order to gain maximum impact. And I’m hoping that learning at one of the world’s top universities will further develop my leadership skills.”

MySense consists of data scientists, engineers, testers, clinical researchers and a commercially-experienced management team. The company is growing quickly and is now working on raising brand awareness, building a research partnership network and preparing its platform for international markets.

When Mohammed Belal became an SME Leader in 2019, he had already co-founded MIRICO, a company developing laser sensing technology for real-time gas sensing. Now, Mohammed is setting up a new venture, Celestial Eye, a spin-out from RAL Space.

Celestial Eye is developing innovative space-borne sensors deployed in a constellation to obtain global high-precision weather data. The project is working on providing high-resolution profiles of moisture and temperature across the atmosphere. This will improve the observation and forecasting of weather patterns as well as monitoring climate change.

Mohammed credits the SME Leader programme with honing his entrepreneurial skills, He says: “I gained valuable insights from other SME Leaders about startups and networking. It also helped me develop my management capabilities and the fundamental skills required to set up and scale businesses.”

Mohammed is responsible for setting up the venture and defining business strategy for the launch and development. He is currently focused on raising capital to build an engineering team and launch its first satellite. The mission will improve observations of weather systems, and more accurately forecast extreme events.

Problem:

Jelly Drops are 95% water sweets, designed to help people with dementia stay hydrated. Initially developed by Lewis for his Grandma Pat, Jelly Drops turn something that can often be a difficult task into the highlight of the day.

Solution:

Many people with dementia no longer feel thirst, don’t equate drinking with quenching thirst, or don’t recognise cups or have the dexterity to pick them up. To understand this better, Lewis lived in his grandma’s care home for a month. He realised that while many residents struggled to hydrate themselves independently, they all loved sweets.

Dementia is the leading cause of death in the UK, currently effecting more than 850,000 people. This is expected to reach over 1.5 million by 2040. Jelly Drops are bright, easy to pick up, vegan, sugar-free (with no laxative effect) sweets, that contain natural colours and flavours, and are shelf-stable. They enable people with dementia to hydrate themselves independently and with dignity.

The company has just launched and its main focus is to reach people with dementia that are suffering from dehydration. Jelly Drops will do this through care homes, but also via an online shop to serve people out in the community. Once established in the UK, Jelly Drops plans to ship the products abroad, and already has a waiting list of 35,000 in the US.

Jelly Drops hopes to diversify its product range to help a wider audience with hydration and other critical dietary requirements.

Jelly Drops was the first company accepted onto the Alzheimer’s Society Innovation Accelerator Programme and the project recently won the Outstanding Dementia Care Innovation Award at the Dementia Care Awards. Other awards include Pitch@Palace Global - Winner, European Investment Bank - Social Innovation Prize, EIT Food – UK Winner, EIT Health - Future of Health Award, Innovation Forum - IMAGINE IF! Global winner, Pitch@Palace 11.0 - Audience Vote and People’s Choice Award, Huawei - New Working Order Bursary and the Meaning-Centred Design - Student Healthcare Winner .

Traction:

•        July 2018: Jelly Drops won the RCA’s Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design - Snowdon Award for Disability and Imperial’s Dyson School of Design - DESIRE Award.
•        Aug 2018: Online videos of Jelly Drops receive over 100 million views and features on the BBC, Sky News and many others.
•        Sept 2018: Just Giving page is set up on the company’s behalf and raises almost £10,000.
•        Jan 2019: Jelly Drops features on the TEDX stage in California.
•        Feb 2019: Partner with Alzheimer’s Society on its innovation accelerator programme.
•        March 2019: Raised investment.
•        Aug 2019: Develop Market ready product to start user testing.
•        Feb 2020: Production facility completed and starts supplying people on the waiting list.
•        March 2020: Raised further investment.
•        July 2020: Website launches to the public.
•        Nov 2020: Win Outstanding Dementia Care Innovation Award and produce its millionth Jelly Drop.

Problem:

The value of lost productivity due to knee osteoarthritis is estimated to be $100 billion annually in the US alone. Efforts need to be made to improve recovery from osteoarthritis and musculoskeletal injury.

Solution:

Zappt coordinates targeted neuromuscular activation with the patient’s movements to enable joint offloading in osteoarthritis and dynamic bracing in musculoskeletal injury. Joint offloading involves shifting pressure within the joint away from a region of damage towards a healthier portion whereas dynamic bracing involves selectively applied support in situationally specific load cases.

It plans to carry out user trials with the Royal Dutch Football Association, the KNVB, in the Netherlands. This will be the first major field trial of its novel prototype. Zappt hopes to use the insights gained to hone the product and make sure it performs as partners require.

Traction:

•         2018: Wellcome Trust Musculoskeletal Accelerator funding.
•         2019: Collaboration with Royal Dutch Football Association.

Matthew is a technology specialist with more than 26 years of experience in software engineering, consulting, product development, and startups. Matthew joined the London office of BCG Digital Ventures (DV) in January 2016.

As Partner and Vice President, Engineering, Matthew oversees technology and engineering across all ventures at DV London. As the current speaker for DV's engineering executive committee, Matthew also takes an active role in coordinating the engineering cohort across DV's centres around the world.

Over the last five years, Matthew has been involved in a wide variety of ventures, starting as the CTO of Coup in 2016. He has moved on to director, advisory, and other senior leadership roles across diverse sectors including industrial goods, finance and insurance tech, mobility, resources, e-commerce, and private equity. During his time at DV, Matthew has been involved in the ideation, incubation, and launch of more than 20 internal or publicly launched client ventures.

Before joining DV, Matthew delivered highly complex technology systems in the telecommunications, financial services and payments sectors. Working with startups, product teams, and consulting organisations from Australia, Asia, and Europe, Matthew has helped to build everything from network analysers and flight simulators, through to high-performance mission-critical EFT payment transaction switches, online and mobile banking, and shared mobility platforms.

Matthew blogs on Medium and is always happy to chat about anything to do with technology and the future.

Professor Nicholas Medcalf FREng has worked for Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, since 2017. He is the Deputy Challenge Director for the Medicines Manufacturing Challenge in the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund team. The work involves building business cases for government investment in capital and R&D projects to boost UK health and wealth and delivery of funded programmes.

Nick retains a Visiting Professor role at Loughborough University where he was Professor of Regenerative Medicine Manufacture and Director of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Regenerative Medicine under an EPSRC Fellowship.

Nick has experience in regenerative medicine development building on a career in industry as a chemist and chemical engineer. Nick is a chartered chemist and a chartered chemical engineer, and he has spent a significant amount of his career working within Smith & Nephew. Nick also has experience in quality assurance, process design, regulatory affairs and economic analysis.

His specialties include: project cost projections and cost control; advice to grant funding bodies; set up and management of cleanroom facilities and pilot plants; application of healthcare regulations to new medical product development; project planning and control; and the construction of efficient quality management systems for medical research programmes.

He was made Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2011.

Rupert is a seasoned startup entrepreneur and CEO. He has founded several technology companies and been involved in three successful exits.

Most recently he was CEO of UltraSoC, which he took from struggling academic spinout to success, selling to Siemens in summer 2020 (a deal done wholly over Zoom over lockdown). 

Before UltraSoC, he was Vice-President of Strategic Marketing at Mindspeed following that company’s acquisition of Picochip (now Intel), where he was Chief Marketing Officer. His CV also includes spells at first:telecom (on track for IPO on LSE before acquisition by Atlantic Telecom), Pond Ventures (early-stage deep-tech VC), Arthur D Little, and Analog Devices where he played a key role in the development and mass-market adoption of DSL.  His first startup at age 22 was based on his undergraduate thesis.

Rupert has worked in the UK, US and Europe. He has a degree and postgraduate diploma in electronic engineering from the University of Hull and an MBA from IESE. He is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

Farnaz is a consultant at Deloitte’s London office. Prior to that, was a consultant based in McKinsey. Specialising in life sciences – with nearly 11 years of combined research and consulting experience – Farnaz has management consulting experience leading corporate and business unit strategy; digital transformation; big data strategy; operating model transformation; organisational model redesign; capability design; productivity improvement; business process re-engineering; and business case development for clients. Farnaz primarily focuses on clients in healthcare life sciences, namely the pharmaceutical sector.

Farnaz has additional experience serving clients in other industries, including medical devices, retail, financial services, consumer packaged goods, non-profit, and the international public sector. Her strong soft skills and work experience at a global level has enabled her to engage with teams and clients at all levels.

Farnaz is an active volunteer at the United Nations, developing partnership and communications strategy for the community hospital construction and operations. Farnaz is involved in the UK startup space as a mentor at Accelerate Cambridge, Oxford Foundry and now the Enterprise Hub, mentoring entrepreneurs at various stages in their business development journey.

Dr Andrew Carter FREng has spent his entire career in the field of photonics where he was instrumental in developing III-V semiconductor-based components. From the early days of LEDs to the highly sophisticated monolithic integrated circuits of today, his work continues to drive the performance improvements in optical physical layer performance that underpins the worldwide growth of the internet. In doing so not only has he led the UK’s efforts to industrialise such components, but he has also been instrumental in forging the UK’s ability to tap into the multi-billion-dollar photonic components market as CTO of Marconi Optical Components, Bookham and Oclaro.

Dr Robert Sansom FREng is an experienced angel investor and mentor to technology-based startup businesses in the UK and US.

He is the founder of the Cambridge Angels, a group of expert technology and biotechnology entrepreneurs who invest in and mentor technology startups across the UK.

Robert serves on the board of several startups including Arachnys Information Services, Cambridge Communication Systems, CRFS, Featurespace, IQGeo plc, Myrtle Software, and Netronome Systems. Prior to becoming an angel investor, he co-founded FORE Systems, a leader in high-speed data communications, where he was Chief Technical Officer. Fore Systems went public on NASDAQ in 1994 and was sold to Marconi plc in 1999.

Robert was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2010.

Steve is a leading expert with over 35 years of experience.in the fields of semiconductor device research, nanotechnology and millimetre-wave integrated circuit design.

After founding and leading the Nanoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Glasgow, he co-founded and became Technical Director of Intellemetrics Ltd. His enterprising spirit continued with the foundation of Kelvin Nanotechnology Ltd in 2001.

Steve became Vice-Principal for Research and Enterprise at the University of Glasgow in 2005 where e is responsible for the University’s research strategy and policies. These includes key relations with research sponsors and strategic partners. He also heads up the University’s enterprise activities which has a strong focus on research links with industry and the promotion of spinout companies.

Steve was awarded an OBE for services to the field of nanotechnology in the 2002 Jubilee Honours List and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2007.

Paul Excell is an award-winning entrepreneur, investor and global executive leader with an impressive track record of delivering growth and transformation in startups, scale-ups, global corporates and is passionate about social mobility. He is Chief Operating Officer and Non-Executive Director at ScaleUp Group^™️, providing tech scaleups with unique insights from successful entrepreneurs with over $4 billion in exits plus patient equity/debt growth funding (£2 million to £20 million). He has six tech clients in the growth portfolio, and his clients have raised £30 million to date. 

In addition to this, Paul is Co-Founder and Chair of Global iLabs, Founder and CEO of Excelerate^™️ and Non-Executive Director with Knowledge Gateway (University of Essex). He acts as a judge and mentor for the UK Enterprise Awards and the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Launchpad Innovation Award and SME Leaders.

Paul was previously Chief Customer Innovation Officer, Chief Operating Officer/Group Technology Officer, SVP[PS1]  Global at BT, Chair/member of several business Boards (UK and Spain, Nordics, AsiaPac) and sat on BT Group Board committees on Technology, Risk and Diversity. He was an Engineering Council Board member and acted as advisor to UN Secretary General on sustainability, technology and innovation.

He started his career as an apprentice and is now a chartered engineer (CEng), Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET), the Chartered Institute for IT (FBCS) and Court Liveryman, Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.

Suranga has long experience as an engineer and entrepreneur. He founded Blinkx - an intelligent search engine for video and audio content - in 2004. He led Blinkx as CEO for eight years as well as taking it public in 2007. He is widely regarded as an expert on the convergence of the web, television and online advertising.

 Before his work with Blinkx, Suranga was US Chief Technology Officer of Autonomy where he was mentored by Mike Lynch and led the effort to enable Autonomy’s software to work in highly distributed environments. Suranga joined Balderton as a General Partner in 2014.

An accomplished speaker and commentator on the overlap between technology and media, Suranga has been elected by the World Economic Forum as one of its Young Global Leaders. He was also included in the Top 10 leaders in Science and Innovation by The Observer’s Future 500 list, and was a recipient of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Silver Medal in 2012. Suranga was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2012.