Co-founder, Head of Innovation and Director, OXSIGHT

OXSIGHT develops smart glasses that enhances the residual vision of people with visual impairments. Visual impairments can be caused by a range of degenerative eye diseases including macular degeneration, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy. The glasses enable people to see their surroundings in more detail.

Over 50 million people worldwide are registered as having a visual impairment. OXSIGHT’s patented technology aims to promote independence, inclusion and opportunity by drawing on advances in machine learning and augmented reality. Its smart glasses combine style and functionality and make use of embedded cameras that can operate in a wide range of lighting conditions. These cameras collect video data that is processed using machine learning algorithms to detect faces, text and other objects.

The technology builds on research by Dr Stephen Hicks, Co-founder and Head of Innovation. Supported by the SME Leaders Programme, Dr Hicks aims to expand the company’s technical base and expertise in areas such as user-interfaces, mobile computer vision, personalised machine learning and wearable technology. He will use training and mentoring in systems such as change management to support him as he leads the company in exploring new ventures and product development at a time of rapid growth.

Visit OXSIGHT's website here.

The problem

Trade workers are at risk of long-term knee damage caused by kneeling. Existing knee pads lack flexibility, durability and sufficient support, further increasing this risk .

The solution

Victoria Hamiliton created Recoil knee pads following conversations with her father, a carpenter, about the need for trade workers to have access to better knee support. Victoria’s patented design sandwiches springs between two layers of support so that pressure is better absorbed and spread more evenly.

Developed by a team of biomechanical engineers, Recoil knee pads provide a 76% pressure reduction on the knee – a 20% improvement over existing competitors. The advanced cushioning provides trade workers with greater comfort while helping to prevent knee damage.

By incorporating a 360° pivot mechanism, Victoria has created a knee pad that moves more naturally with the knee. User-tests and feedback have helped the company to improve its design and achieve greater levels of protection and durability.

Recoil officially launched to market in 2016 and has since grown into an international business with sales in over 20 countries worldwide.

Traction

• 2016: Recoil officially launches online
• 2016: Victoria is awarded Business Women Scotland New Entrepreneur of the Year
• 2015: Scottish EDGE Fund Winner

Victoria was awarded a 2017 RAEng 1851 Royal Commission Enterprise Fellowship to further develop the business by recruiting to her team and expanding capacity for manufacturing Recoil Knee pads in Scotland, UK. 

CEO and Founder, Biorelate Ltd

Over 80% of data is unstructured, which can make it harder to access and to develop insights from. With global scientific output doubling every nine years, biomedical innovation is limited by a company’s ability to make use of the large volumes of data at its disposal. Biorelate’s solutions overcome this challenge by creating a high-performance platform for curating biomedical knowledge that can be used to accelerate innovation.

Biorelate’s platform, Galactic AI, improves access to data and information. This enables drug discovery companies to gain better insights to develop new innovations. The cloud-based computing platform they have developed can organise, analyse and connect large volumes of data to save time and resources when solving complex research problems. Its high-level processing power provides real-time insights and ensures that companies keep pace with the latest research outputs and developments.

Daniel Jamieson, CEO and Founder, has set a vision for Biorelate’s growth that includes expanding product sales in existing markets and gaining traction in the US. Support from SME Leaders Programme comes at a pivotal time as he focuses on business development, product innovation and sales. He will be able to use training through the programme to further develop leadership skills, in areas such as negotiation, as the company enters a significant phase of growth.

Visit Biorelate's website here.

A child dies of malaria every two minutes, often because they arrive at hospital too late to be saved. The disease is one of the world’s most deadly, with approximately 207 million infections and more than 600,000 deaths each year. Drug resistance is spreading globally and many strains of the disease are untreatable. 

George developed the MediSieve system to tackle this terrible situation. MediSieve uses haemofilter technology which ‘sieves’ the blood rapidly and safely reduces malarial parasites from a patient's system. This novel technology requires no drugs or chemicals and can be used to treat any malaria patient, including drug-resistant and other untreatable cases, keeping patients alive and symptom-free indefinitely.

Used either in isolation or as a stand-alone treatment, the haemofilter removes malaria infected cells directly from the bloodstream in a dialysis-like process. 

In severe cases, MediSieve could reduce mortality and recovery times; in non-severe cases, patients could recover in hours rather than days as the efficacy of drugs is increased and their side-effects eliminated.

Following extensive trials, MediSieve products will be commercially available in the next couple of years.

Simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) is essential for robots to explore and understand their environments. Nearly all autonomous vehicles or robots, from driverless cars to robot vacuum cleaners, use SLAM technology in some way. SLAMcore Limited, a spinout from Imperial College London, has developed spatial AI by using algorithms to generate reliable positioning and mapping intelligence on low-power, cost-effective hardware.

SLAMcore’s technology can calculate an accurate and reliable position without the need for GPS or any other external structure. Its software can enhance the capabilities of off-the-shelf sensors that enable commercially-viable solutions for applications such as warehouse robots, inspection drones, delivery and service robots.

Owen Nicholson is co-founder and CEO of SLAMcore. Owen became an SME Leader in 2020. He says that the programme can help SLAMcore: “I’m very excited about meeting and working with my mentor and coach. The former will hopefully help address some of the challenges of being a first time CEO of a deep-tech startup. The coach will guide us towards relevant tools, resources and best practice. The timing is right with us transitioning from a team with great tech, to a company with a great product.”

After three years of development and fundraising that has garnered millions of pounds backing, SLAMcore is now gaining commercial traction and developing product-market fit. If all goes according to plan in the coming years, the company will have thousands of robots using its spatial AI technology to calculate their positions, understand unfamiliar surroundings and navigate with consistent reliability.

Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Swytch Technology

Swytch Technology’s eBike conversion kit can be used to turn a regular bicycle into an electric bicycle. The lightweight, durable, hand-held kit is easy to fit, quickly removable and works on any make of bicycle.

Converting existing bicycles into electric ones is more energy efficient than building an electric bike from scratch. This makes Swytch’s patent pending technology a more accessible way to get the benefits of electric transport without the costs. Its system provides up to 250 Watts of power and a single charge can last up to 50 kilometres.

With over 5,000 customers across 40 countries, Swytch is well placed for a share of the global eBike market which is growing at over 50% every year. Swytch is now preparing to launch its new eBike system that aims to deliver industry-leading performance in a cost-effective way.

Dmitro Khroma, CTO of Swytch, is responsible for all aspects of the product development lifecycle including conceptual design, supply-chain management and quality control. Leadership skills gained through the SME Leaders Programme will support him in developing skills for high level strategy and leading a multidisciplinary team to ensure Swytch’s sustained success. Dmitro Khroma also plans to use networking and mentoring through the scheme. This will gain him benefits from a broad range of perspectives on some of the challenges facing rapidly growing business.

Visit Swytch Technology's website here.

There are approximately 1 billion people living with a neglected tropical disease worldwide. Two of the main infectious diseases, visceral leishmaniasis and cryptococcal meningitis, account for 220,000 global deaths annually – most of these fatalities are children.

 These diseases can be treated with liposomal amphotericin B nanomedicine (which measures ~100 nm), a safer and more efficacious version of amphotericin B. However, due to the difficulties and costs associated with large scale production, there is a significant global supply shortage of this crucial nanomedicine –  around 60 million vials are needed with an estimated value of more than $6 billion. The current multi-step, batch-based process requires the addition and removal of water and organic solvents, which is inefficient. It also limits the potential scale of its manufacture.

The solution

Dr Justin Tian is one of the inventors of CommandNano technology. He is also a co-founder of the company that is aiming to overcome the manufacturing issues of the nanomedicine by creating a one-step, solvent/water-free continuous nanofracturing platform. This would enable scalable production by halving costs, reducing manufacturing time from hours to minutes, and allowing interactive integration of design and process. The new process maintains product quality and by eliminating the use of solvents or contaminated water, it generates no toxic wastes.

CommandNano is also capable of synthesising other nanomedicine systems such as solid lipid nanoparticles, nanostructured lipid carriers and polymeric nanoparticles. It can also encapsulate small organic molecules, large biological molecules and inorganic nanoparticles. 

The technology has already received £500,000 of financial support and is now looking to form a partnership for pilot scale clinical manufacturing. In the coming years it intends to conduct a bioequivalent study on liposomal amphotericin B nanomedicine. It will also file an FDA application in the US for producing generic drugs.

Dr Tian says: “The Enterprise Fellowship has enabled to me to actively engage with companies and organisations within the nanomedicine supply chain. It has also identified the key challenges in relation to the scale-up and commercial production of liposomal nanomedicines.”

Traction

2016 NSF-SFI centre-to-centre research project on continuous manufacture of nanopharmaceutics
2017 Invest Northern Ireland Proof-of-Concept project
2018 Ex-vivo nanomedicine comparison
2019 Innovate UK ICURe programme
2019 Dr Justin YW Tian was awarded an Enterprise Fellowship
2020 The company made an international patent application for its process platform and formulation

Founder and CEO, Mobilus Labs Ltd

A near-death experience diving off the coast of Mozambique focused Jordan McRae on inventing technology that would enable audio communications between divers underwater. Jordan, an MIT and Stanford  engineering graduate, has developed a hands-free, ear-free device that can be used by users out of water too. 

Mobilus Labs, the company he founded, has created two-way bone conduction technology that is proving very useful for workers in the construction industry and other sectors where extreme noisy environments can interfere with personal communications.

Mobilus’s first product, the mobiWAN, has a clip-on design that allows it to fit on the back of most industry safety helmets. The technology picks up the user’s voice from vibrations transmitted through their face and skull when they speak without capturing any background noise. The microphones also act as speakers, enabling audio to be transmitted and then received by the user’s inner ear.

Jordan is the Founder and CEO of Mobilus Labs. He became an SME Leader in 2019 and says that the programme has proved useful to the company by providing access to mentors, experts and investors. He says: “It has also furthered my own professional growth by enabling me to take an INSEAD executive leadership course.”

Now Mobilus is looking to deliver the next generation of its voice platforms to market. The company is expanding its team and raising Series A funding of equity investment as well as actively demonstrating its product market fit in construction, energy and manufacturing fields.  

Visit Mobilus Lab's website here.

Founder and CEO, Provenance

Jessi Baker founded Provenance in 2013. Jessi says that she launched it “because of a personal frustration about the lack of information available about things we buy. I wanted to buy products from brands that are making robust efforts to better the environment and society”.

Provenance is a software solution for sustainability communications. Its technology enables brands to communicate social and environmental impact with shoppers online and in-store in a credible way, connecting claims to supply chain data and third-party proof.

By doing so, Provenance enables shoppers to drive progress through what they buy and generates rewards for those brands making a positive impact on people and the planet.

Jessi is the CEO of Provenance and became an SME Leader in 2019 – the same year that she was awarded an MBE “for services to global supply chains”. Jessi says that the programme has helped her focus and develop leadership skills as well as get support and guidance from her mentor.

Provenance is now working with well-known businesses in the UK and across global supply chains, including The Princes Group, Pernod Ricard, Fonterra, The Co-op and Cult Beauty, along with NGOs and certification bodies. 

Visit Provenance's website here.

Formerly the UK Innovation Director for Atkins, Elspeth is the CEO and Founder of IAND, a digital platform that helps major enterprises manage multiple suppliers. 

Initially graduating as a chemist, Elspeth later turned her hand to transport and urban design, demonstrating business and technical leadership on over 100 transport planning projects both nationally and around the world.

Elspeth chairs the Enterprise Hub’s Innovators Network and is a judge for the Hub’s Launchpad Competition. She is also a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

In 2017, Elspeth was awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to Engineering and Enterprise. 

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.

Professor Mark Arthur Tooley FREng is the immediate Past President of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. He was the Head of the Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering and Director of Research and Development at the Royal United Hospitals, Bath until 2017 when he retired from full-time NHS work.  Since then, he has held several part-time roles. He is a specialist scientific advisor for NHS England, a digital clinical advisor for the West of England Academic Health Science network, and a healthcare technology consultant. He is a registered Consultant Clinical Scientist, an honorary professor at the University of Bath, and a visiting professor at the University of the West of England.

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 Academy of Engineering, the Royal College of Physicians, the Institute of Engineering and Technology, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, and the Institute of Physics. He is a chartered engineer and chartered scientist. Mark is on the peer-review college of EPSRC, has recently been a member of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Healthcare Technologies Strategic Advisory Team and the Royal Society Fellowship panel.

Mark has been a long-standing member of the Panel for Biomedical Engineering at the Royal Academy of Engineering (now called the healthcare policy topic group). He was recently a member of the biomedical engineering membership panel, the Policy Committee, and the working group for Systems 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.

As an entrepreneur and communications professional, Helen's mission is to help businesses do more good in the world. After nearly 15 years working in government relations and leadership communications, Helen set up her own boutique communications agency, HN Communications. A smaller and more person-centred alternative to bigger agencies, HN Communications works with large and small clients to deliver complex communications projects. Clients include Bosch, Heineken, Nissan and The Climate Group. 

Helen founded her latest venture, Leaders LIVE in 2020, just as COVID-19 hit. Leaders LIVE fills a much-needed gap in the market for an independent, online platform for thought leadership and debate. Leaders LIVE brings together leaders from business, government and NGOs to debate some of the biggest challenges facing our world today, from tackling climate change to addressing diversity. After only a year Leaders LIVE has built a dedicated community, with live events hosted on LinkedIn and YouTube. Events regularly have hundreds of live attendees, with thousands more catching up on the replay. 

With a mechanical engineering degree from Imperial College London and an MBA from Erasmus, Mike is a chartered engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and a Sainsbury Management Fellow. 

He has led turnarounds, helped establish new businesses and delivered complex projects; challenging and coaching teams to innovate and transcend existing performance. Mike’s experience includes senior operations, project and corporate roles with Royal Dutch Shell UK, and large-scale project development and delivery roles at Alstom in locations across Europe, Asia and North America. Most recently he has been a Director at Centrica Energy, where he is responsible for one of the company’s largest operated gas businesses. He is a Non-Executive Director of Acqualithium and Vice-Chair of the Board of Hymers College. 

Naomi started her career at the National Criminal Intelligence Service (now the National Crime Agency), where she spent three years looking at fraud and financial crime intelligence. It included a stint working with the FBI in Quantico, Virginia. She then moved to RBS, where she spent 10 years working in various risk roles, across both the first and second line of defence.

Most recently, Naomi has been working at LBG as a Director in the Chief Resilience and Security Office, where she led on operational resilience and cyber and information security policy. She co-founded the Operational Resilience Collaboration Group, made up of more than 40 firms working together to build resilience in the industry, and co-authored the ORCG industry standard on operational resilience. Naomi also developed the ‘Mind the Gap’ initiative across various FTSE100 companies, with senior women giving  inspirational talks and providing mentorships to help encourage more women into careers in security. 

Dr John C Taylor OBE FREng was born in Buxton, Derbyshire in 1936.  Having spent five years living in Canada during his childhood, he returned home towards the end of the Second World War.  He attended King William’s College on the Isle of Man before studying Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

Dr John C Taylor is one of the UK’s most successful and prolific living inventors and, over a sixty-year career, has invented, produced and sold components for numerous electrical appliances around the world. 

While at his company Strix Ltd, Dr Taylor established the business as the world-leading manufacturer of kettle controls.  His research was instrumental in designing the ubiquitous safety switch that turns a kettle off when it boils and prevents it from overheating, and he also designed the 360˚ cordless connectors in modern kettles.

Dr Taylor’s innovations led to the production and sale of almost two billion kettle controls - 75% of the global market.  His inventions in the development of bi-metallic safety critical cut-outs for electric motors are also used in domestic appliances such as hairdryers and fan heaters.  His work has also seen over four hundred patents filed, including automatic windshield wipers, electric motor protectors and cordless kettle connectors and controls, and it is a testament to these components’ visionary design that they continue to be in prolific use today.

Awards

Dr Taylor has been the recipient of many honours including, but not limited to, the following:

• Appointment as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2011 for his outstanding contribution to the advancement of British engineering, innovation and commerce
  
• Appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2011 New Year honours list for his services to business and horology
  
• Four Queen’s Awards given to the company he started, Strix Ltd. Three are for Export and one is for Innovation, granted for his 360˚ cordless kettle connector, used by millions around the world each day
  
• The Harrison Medal, awarded by the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers for excellence in horology
  
• Awarded the Chancellor’s 800^th Anniversary Medal for outstanding philanthropy from the University of Cambridge, presented by HRH Duke of Edinburgh.
  

He is also an elected Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, and has been conferred Honorary Doctorates from University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and Durham University.  When he’s not inventing and innovating, Dr Taylor is a keen aviator, mountaineer, yachtmaster and philanthropist.

Philanthropy

Dr John C Taylor is a committed philanthropist and has made a number of donations in order to ensure that young engineers in the UK have the tools they need to be competitive in a global market.  In 2017, he became the main sponsor of the new Dr John C Taylor Enterprise Hub, affectionately known as the Taylor Centre, in the Royal Academy of Engineering.  He also established in perpetuity a Chair Professorship of Innovation in the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge. 

Following his career in creating electrical control switches, Dr Taylor became well-known for his interest in clocks and is one of the world’s leading experts in the work of John Harrison, an early pioneer of timekeeping and sea clocks. This led him to design and help build the Corpus Chronophage, a large, time-eating clock which that stands proud on the exterior of the Taylor Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.  Dr Taylor donated the clock, alongside a bestowment to make the Taylor Library possible, to his alma mater in order to support bright students of future generations.

http://www.johnctaylor.com/

Richard has significant experience in managing early stage and high-growth investor-backed businesses. He has spent the last 20 years finding, building and exiting these, investing in many. 

He has a strong focus on numbers, financial models, strategic and execution planning, and risk management. He has a toolkit of methodologies to call on to help businesses grow.

He is an experienced non-executive director of both SME and PLC (AIM) companies, has a good knowledge of the funding landscape and is well networked (UK and global) with connections to most Venture Capital, PE, lawyer, accountant and High Net Worth Investor communities. He has led and advised on many fundraises, including: grant; EIS  and SEIS High Net Worth Investors; Venture Capital Trust; crowdfunding; ‘follow-ons’; Series A; ‘new’ such as, revenue-based funding; and all forms of debt.

Richard is a trained mentor and coach and able to challenge and win trust at the same time. He has designed and delivered incubator and accelerator structures and programmes.

He founded and runs Realise Capital, a strategic financial and growth practice, is a chartered accountant (FCA) and previously has had roles as co-founder, CEO and corporate finance director. He has seen and had to deal with most situations that arise on a growth journey and can be hands on if the need arises. He has supported more than 75 ambitious founders to achieve exits in excess of £150 million and raise investment in excess of £25 million.

Amelia is a Senior Growth Architect at BCG Digital Ventures. She has more than five years’ experience building and scaling numerous B2B and B2C tech startups in the UK, US, Dubai and France. She has also worked with some of the world’s largest corporates to accelerate their marketing, sales and e-commerce efforts.

Her capabilities include competitive market intelligence, data-driven marketing experiments, analytics, go-to-market strategies, proposition development, digital marketing, and creating martech stacks across traditional and digital channels. Prior to BCG Digital Ventures, Amelia was a Growth Strategy Consultant at Manifesto Growth and Head of Brand and Partnerships at TRIBE.