CEO, Mobilus Labs

Mobilus Labs is transforming voice communication with a wearable, hands-free, ear-free voice platform that enables teams of any size to communicate and connect in any environment from whatever distance.

Using innovations in bone conduction technology and voice recognition, Mobilus enables voice communication in extreme and noisy environments. Its two-way bone conduction technology uses micro-vibrations on the surface of the head to capture voice and transmit it directly to the inner ear. Its ability to isolate the voice makes the platform effective even when used in noisy environments, making it easier for teams to communicate in target industries such as construction, mixed reality and the emergency services, amongst others.

Building on over 10 years of experience as an entrepreneur building complex hardware and software platforms, Jordan McRae founded Mobilus Labs and leads the development of its technology. Jordan will use the SME Leaders Programme to support his vision of creating a diverse and inclusive team focused on agile innovation while delivering a return to investors. Working with experienced mentors, Jordan aims to triple the size of his team as the company scales up and builds on traction in the construction sector where the cost of poor communication costs an estimated £16 billion each year.

Visit Mobilus Lab's website here.

COO, mOm Incubators Ltd

Cost-effective, electronically controlled, inflatable incubators, developed by mOm, could help to improve the survival rates of prematurely born babies.

The World Health Organization estimates that there are 15 million premature births each year and highlights that preterm birth complications are the leading cause of deaths in children under the age of five, responsible for one million deaths in 2015. Three-quarters of these deaths are said to be preventable with current, cost-effective solutions. Compact, robust inflatable incubators, created by mOm can provide an accessible solution in places that need it.

The incubators have been designed in close collaboration with clinical specialists to ensure that it is both user-friendly and meets clinical quality standards.

Chief Operating Officer and co-founder, Matthew Khoory, has a significant role in leading strategy and business development as the company finalises development and testing of its product. This includes conducting clinical trials to gather the data needed for regulatory approval.

Using training from the SME Leaders Programme, Matthew will develop skills for managing a team that is growing significantly. Mentoring and coaching through the programme will help as Matthew strengthens skills in negotiation and project management to create and foster the partnerships that will support the company’s continued growth. 

Visit mOm Incubator's website here.

CEO and Founder, Provenance

Provenance uses blockchain technology to help brands and retailers build customer trust through greater transparency. Its software platform helps brands to promote conscious, low-impact consumption by providing a digital history that makes it easy to trace and verify the origins, attributes and impact of a product.

Ethical spending grew by 3.2 % to £81.3 billion in 2016 and it has been suggested that products marketed as sustainable grow more than five times faster than those that aren’t. With openness and trust as key drivers to a brand’s success, Provenance leads the movement for greater transparency. Its novel data systems assemble and verify supply-chain information using blockchain technology. This allows information to be stored securely while remaining accessible but unchangeable. The software can be embedded into existing business systems making it easier for a company to provide accessible, trustworthy information about the origin, journey and impact of its products.

CEO and Founder, Jessi Baker leads a team that has more than tripled in size over the past year. With further growth anticipated to meet consumer demand, Jessi will use support from the SME Leaders Programme to help scaling up Provenance while navigating the challenges of establishing a new product in an emerging market.

Visit Provenance's website here.

Chief Financial Officer and Head of Commercial, Notpla

50% of plastic packaging is used once and thrown away with estimates suggesting that plastics can take several centuries to decompose. Notpla is a plastic alternative, made from plants and brown seaweed, that biodegrades naturally in 4-6 weeks.

Notpla’s sustainable materials can reduce plastic waste and lessen the carbon impact. It is estimated that they have 85 % less associated carbon emission than equivalent plastic packaging. The company’s first product, Ooho, is a flexible biodegradable packaging for beverages and sauces that can even be eaten!. Ideal for products with a short-use life, Oohos can replace plastic cups at sporting events and sachets in take-aways. Oohos recently replaced 40,000 Lucozade bottles at the Virgin Money London Marathon. Notpla’s future packaging solutions include heat sealable films, take-away boxes and nets.

Chief Financial Officer and Head of Commercial, Lise Honsinger, is responsible for business development, strategy and financial planning and leads the company’s transition from development to commercial operations. With a fast-growing team, SME Leader Lise aims to use mentoring and coaching through the programme to help establish operational structures and a culture that promotes growth as Notpla enters new global markets. 

Visit Notpla's website here.

CEO, Odin Vision

Odin Vision has developed a novel artificial intelligence (AI) technology for endoscopy to help support doctors in detecting and diagnosing cancer.

Patients showing signs of bowel cancer may have a colonoscopy with a small endoscopic camera to inspect tissue for small growths, called polyps, some of which can develop into cancer. These can be challenging for clinicians to detect and diagnose with some studies suggesting that over 20% of polyps can be missed.

Founded by a team of clinicians, medical imaging and AI experts, Odin Vision has developed a suite of tools that use AI to improve detection and diagnosis. The technology uses deep-learning algorithms to identify polyps in real-time so that doctors can more efficiently make diagnoses at the earliest stage possible. This improves patient outcomes by increasing opportunities for early treatment to reduce the incidence and impact of bowel cancer.

Peter Mountney, CEO, is developing a strategy to support Odin Vision through clinical trials and obtaining regulatory approval. Peter aims to use a combination of training, mentoring and coaching through the SME Leaders Programme to get timely support in financing and change management at a time of significant growth.

Visit Odin Vision's website here.

COO and Co-founder, Open Bionics

Open Bionics have created the Hero Arm, an affordable, 3D printed, multi-grip bionic hand. Lightweight and durable, the Hero Arm is an empowering, medically-approved, myoelectric prosthesis for below elbow amputee adults and children aged eight and above.

Designed with customisation and comfort as priorities, the Hero Arm is lightweight and robust while also being breathable and adjustable. Embedded with special sensors, it intuitively detects muscle movement so that it can move and coordinate with life-like precision.

Developed by a rapidly growing team in Bristol, the award-winning technology is now available through prosthetic clinics in the UK and Europe with expansion into the US market planned soon. COO and co-founder, Samantha Payne leads Open Bionic’s product design, branding, communications, culture, HR and customer service. Samantha will use training and coaching through the SME Leaders Programme to strengthen leadership and management skills as the start-up scales internationally. Mentoring and coaching support will also help Samantha to further develop her design-thinking and gain a deeper understanding of the company’s commercial offering as it expands into new markets and develops new products.

Visit the Open Bionics website here.

CEO, Agile Analog

Agile Analog’s novel approach to the design of analogue semiconductors is transforming the electronics industry by making it easier to deliver customised solutions in electronic circuits.

As systems-on-chip and application-specific integrated circuits grow in complexity to meet digital demands, the demand for better analogue solutions has also increased. Current techniques in analogue design are based on older, manually-intensive methods that often lead to components that are restricted in use, inefficient and costly to change. Agile Analog uses artificial intelligence to automate the design and delivery of customised components that efficiently match customer’s requirements at the same time as driving efficiency in both power consumption and cost.

Tim Ramsdale, the company’s CEO, is developing a roadmap to support Agile Analog as it enters the next phase of growth. This includes raising additional funding, delivering first products to market and expanding their customer base. Tim will use training and development through the SME Leaders programme to strengthen skills in areas such sales and business development as the company targets a $2 billion market in analogue intellectual property design.

Visit Agile Analog's website here.

Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Arctoris

Arctoris offers fully automated experiments-as-a-service that helps researchers to accelerate progress towards new discoveries. The service increases accessibility in cancer research by making cutting-edge techniques available using just a laptop and internet connection.

Current data generation methods in cellular and molecular biology are inefficient and yield poor quality data. Arctoris enables efficient data generation with a high degree of consistency, precision and reliability. Leveraging the power of robotic experimentation, Arctoris makes it easier for researchers and biotech entrepreneurs, in cancer research and other fields, to generate, analyse and visualise data. The cloud-based platform removes many of the financial, technical and geographic barriers to cancer research, improving the accessibility of leading techniques to all.

Arctoris co-founder, Tom Fleming, brings significant expertise as a chemist and experience in leading clinical research to the role Chief Operating Officer. He is responsible for overseeing daily operations and directing strategy and development of new capabilities and technologies.

Supported by the SME Leaders Programme, Tom has plans for the company to scale effectively and transition from small-team strategies to large-scale approaches for global distribution. Leadership training will help Tom to develop skills in measuring individual and team performance while creating an organisational culture that promotes collaboration, satisfaction and exceptional results.

Visit Arctoris's website here.

CEO, Cambridge GaN Devices Ltd

Cambridge GaN Devices’ (CGD) new approach to designing high-performance Gallium Nitride (GaN) power electronic devices could transform the 600V semiconductor industry by offering a more efficient alternative to current silicon-based and GaN devices.

GaN’s physical properties mean it can operate at higher frequencies than silicon, resulting in circuits that are smaller, faster and more efficient. While GaN power devices already exist, CGD’s approach overcomes the stability issues associated with them, through use of a novel, patented transistor and adding smart functionalities. This new combination makes CGD’s solutions more accessible, allowing customers to leverage the benefits of GaN in a wider range of applications.

The University of Cambridge spin-out was co-founded by CGD CEO, Giorgia Longobardi who had a central role in engineering the core technology. Supported by the SME Leaders Programme, Giorgia is defining the company’s strategy while developing a rapidly growing staff. With an energy-efficient product that delivers from 5- to 10 times less power losses, Giorgia’s vision is to establish production partnerships and a customer-base that will allow CGD to target the £400 million GaN power device market.

David Lane is Professor and Founding Director in the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, a joint venture between Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh Universities. 

Previously he established Heriot-Watt’s Ocean Systems Laboratory with an international reputation in marine robotics. He has been a visiting Fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution USA, visiting Professor at Florida Atlantic University, Scientific Advisor to the NATO Undersea Research Centre, La Spezia Italy, Development Engineer with the former Ferranti Ltd and Diver-Maintainer with British Oceanics (now Subsea7).

In 2013 he chaired the InnovateUK RAS-SIG committee leading development of the UK’s RAS2020 national robotics innovation strategy and sits on the Advisory Board of the 8 Great Technologies Venture Fund, BAe Systems Corporate Foresight Panel and the UK Atomic Energy Authority Programme Advisory Committee. 

David Chairs the RSE Enterprise Fellowship and B3 Engineering Fellowship Selection Committees, is a member and mentor in the RAEng Enterprise Fellowship Programme, a member of the EPSRC Engineering Strategic Advisory Team (SAT) and RAEng Finance Committee. 

He has been elected to fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2012), Royal Society of Edinburgh, Institution of Engineering and Technology, Society of Underwater Technology and Royal Geographical Society. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to Engineering in the 2016 Queen’s New Year Honours list.

Douglas has a 40 year business career covering almost every aspect, at every level, of healthcare technology product design and product commercialisation processes.

Having trained in Industrial Design Engineering (Edinburgh Napier University 1974), Douglas progressed from hands on designer to the management of design in the high tech arena.

Using his company Crombie Anderson as a base for innovation and incubation, he subsequently spun out three other high-tech start -up companies of which two became publicly traded business operating in medical fields.

Douglas is the prime mover in these businesses by leading both the innovation and commercialisation processes, including raising over £40million in private and institutional funding. Today he is internationally recognised for his innovation and entrepreneurial experience and is a regular keynote speaker at healthcare and business congresses around the world.

In 1990, his 5yr old son Leif suffered a spontaneous retinal detachment that went undetected until it was too late to treat. Douglas was struck by the limited capability of diagnostic tools available to clinicians and decided to address this issue. He built a dedicated research team, which led to the formation of Optos plc, a business funded by Archangel from the outset.

Optos succeeded in designing and patenting  a scanning laser ophthalmoscope: the world's first ophthalmic device  that enabled eye care practitioners to capture a digital ultra wide-field image of the retina in a single scan. The new method of examining the retina, marketed as the optomap® Retinal Exam, is now offered as the preferred standard of care by 11,500 eye-care specialists in Europe and the US. Over 70 million optomap® retinal exams have been conducted worldwide already, with a scanning range of approximately 82 per cent of the retina - a huge improvement on the 5-30% of conventional examination techniques.

Douglas was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2013.

Sir Peter Bonfield is a leading international business executive with over forty-five years experience in the fields of electronics, computers and communications. Change management in international technology companies has been at the centre of his long and illustrious career.

Since 2002 Sir Peter has been involved with a diverse portfolio of companies and is currently operating at main Board level or director of several companies in the USA, Europe and the Far East. He has served in the past as CEO of ICL and more recently of BT Group.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (1993), the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the British Computer Society, the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the Marketing Society and the Royal Society of Arts.

Sir Peter is a Liveryman of The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, Freeman of the City of London, Honorary Citizen of Dallas, Texas and Member of The Pilgrims of Great Britain.

John is the Director of the Cambridge Engineering Design Centre following a seven-year spell with PA Consulting Group's Technology Division where he was Manager of the Advanced Process Group. He was appointed director of the Engineering Design Centre in 1997 and a University Professor in 2004.

At PA John gained wide experience of product development with a particular focus on the design of medical equipment and high-integrity systems, where clients required a risk-based systems approach to design to ensure timely delivery of safe systems. John is directly involved in the teaching of design at all levels of the undergraduate course.

His research interests are in the general area of engineering design, particularly the development of design methodologies to address specific design issues, for example, process management, change management, healthcare design and inclusive design. As well as publishing over 800 papers, he has written and edited a number of books on medical equipment design, inclusive design and process management.

John is currently leading a team with the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal College of Physicians and the Academy of Medical Sciences to develop a systems approach to healthcare redesign and continuous improvement. He was made Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2012.

Bill is a leading scientist worldwide in the field of Medical Materials. His major research contributions have been recognised by numerous international awards, medals and memberships.

He has been the Professor of Medical Materials at the University of Cambridge; served as Director of Cambridge Pfizer Institute for Pharmaceutical Materials Science; Cambridge Director of CMI Interdisciplinary Research Cluster in Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering and Director of University of London Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) in Biomedical Materials. He has been Head of Department, Dean, and Governor at Queen Mary University of London. 

He has been the editor of the Journal of The Royal Society: Interface, the Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine, the Journal of Materials Science, and of the Journal of Materials Science Letters.

Bill is Emeritus Professor of Medical Materials in the University of Cambridge. He is internationally recognised for his pioneering research contributions to biomaterials for medical devices, with awards including the Royal Academy of Engineering Prince Philip Gold Medal; the Royal Society Armourers and Brasiers Company Medal; the Kelvin Medal; the European Society for Biomaterials George Winter Award; the Japanese Society for Biomaterials Medal; the Institute of Materials Griffiths Medal and Chapman Medal; the UK Society for Biomaterials President's Prize; the Acta Metallurgica H.H. Holloman Award and the International Union for Physical Sciences and Engineering in Medicine Award of Merit. 

Professor Bonfield's exceptional interdisciplinary contribution has been recognised by his election to all three UK National Academies as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci).

Professor Joe McGeehan completed his PhD in 1971 and since then has been instrumental in many aspects of research and teaching in the field of Communications. He is even referred to as the 'godfather of mobile communications'.

Joe has been conducting research and development into mobile communications technologies and systems since 1973. Working with colleagues, he has pioneered many of the major developments in the field including: deterministric ray-tracing for propagation prediction and network coverage; linear modulation techniques and systems; linearised RF power amplifiers; SMART antennas; wideband CDMA for 3G; WLAN technologies and 60GHz propagation and communication systems.  

Professor McGeehan's achievements in research have been acknowledged by membership of a number of national and international committees in the field of Communications, external examiner positions and mentoring of start-up companies. 

His involvement in Communications over several decades led to being awarded in the Queens Birthday Honours 2004 a CBE for ‘services to the Communications Industry’. Joe was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1994 and was listed in 2004 as No.6 in the world’s ‘Technology AgendaSetters’ by silicon.com (USA) (N.B., Bill Gates was placed No.2).

Billy's vision is to change the way we currently diagnose and monitor serious disease. He is the co-founder of Owlstone, which aims to become the global leader in the non-invasive detection of cancer, infectious disease and inflammatory disease. 

It is best to detect disease as early as possible: treatments are more effective, less involved and more lives can be saved. There is no better example of this than with cancer. If detected early, the chances of cancer survival can be as good at 95%. But this drops massively to about 5% at later stages. Unfortunately there are still far too many people detected at later stage. 

To address this, Owlstone Medical has developed a breathalyzer for disease. Every time you breathe out there are hundreds of chemicals on your breath. Some are telltale markers of disease, which Owlstone microchip chemical sensor technology is able to detect. Through early detection Owlstone have set a goal to have saved 100,000 lives and $1.5 billion in health care costs by 2020.

Since co-founding Owlstone, Billy has been overseeing the development and implementation of the detection technology with nanotechnology foundry partners and is heavily involved in the creation and realisation of new technologies and IP.  He is also active in business development, demonstrating how the Owlstone technology can be a paradigm shift in detection applications and deployment scenarios. 

Prior to his time at Owlstone Billy was a Research Associate in the Microsystems and Nanotech group at Cambridge University. In an academic / industry consortium he designed and developed silicon-opto hybrid devices for next generation telecoms systems.

Cliff is a physicist with interests in soft matter, liquid crystals, displays, optoelectronics and photonics. Acknowledged as an inspirational technical leader and strategist, inventor and innovator, entrepreneur and public speaker, he is an experienced and award winning Chief Technology Officer, company founder and director. Cliff is currently a Professor of Physics; EPSRC Fellow of Advanced Manufacturing at the University of Leeds.

He is experienced in raising venture capital, growing ZBD Solutions Limited from nothing to over $30M sales per annum, becoming Europe's second fastest growing technology company for 2012. 

Professor Jones is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Chartered Physicist and Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, and Senior Member of the Society for Information Display.

Professor Mark Tooley is Head of the Department of Medical Physics & Bioengineering and Director of Research and Development at the Royal United Hospitals, Bath. He is a registered Consultant Clinical Scientist. He is a visiting professor at the University of Bath, and the University of the West of England. He retires from the NHS in the summer of 2017.

Mark completed his BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Bath in 1979. He was sponsored by Westinghouse Brake and Signal company for the four years of the course. He then did an MSc and PhD in Medical Physics at the University of London. His MSc thesis was developing a EEG frequency analyser for anaesthesia. For his PhD research, Mark invented (with a cardiologist) an original method for rate-independent diagnosis of cardiac rhythm for implantable devices, which was patented.  He spent the rest of his career in Medical Physics and Bioengineering departments, both in hospitals and academia, working along medical colleagues. He has worked at St Bartholomew’s hospital in London, Bristol University, United Bristol healthcare NHS Trust, and the Royal United Hospital, Bath. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET, formally IEE), the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM), and the Institute of Physics (until 2016). He is a Chartered Engineer and Chartered Scientist. Mark is on the peer-review college of EPSRC, has recently a member of the EPSRC Healthcare Technologies Strategic Advisory Team. He was recently on the Royal Society fellowship panel. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Mark has been a long standing member of the Panel for Biomedical Engineering at the Royal Academy of Engineering, is a member of one of their membership panels, a member of the Policy Committee, and on the working group for System Thinking in Healthcare.  He has mentored on the enterprise scheme. 

Mark’s research interests include:  innovations in medicine, physics applications in anaesthesia, simulation in medicine, physiological measurement, biological signal processing, measuring the depth of anaesthesia, blood pressure measurement and novel patient monitoring solutions.