Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top Cambridge based Director operating in the Medical space. If you think a Director is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Vincenzo Garzya
Patient Centricity Excellence Director of AstraZeneca
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About AstraZeneca: AstraZeneca is a global pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, manufactures, and markets prescription medicines.
Claus Bendtsen
Executive Director of AstraZeneca
Claus Bendtsen heads Quantitative Biology as part of Discovery Sciences within AstraZeneca. His department provides global support in areas of informatics, mathematical modelling, image analytics and non-clinical statistics. Prior to joining AstraZeneca he held positions at Novartis and Merck & Co. Earlier in his career he co-founded three start-ups and worked in academia. He holds a Ph.D. in applied mathematics and an MBA.
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About AstraZeneca: AstraZeneca is a global pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, manufactures, and markets prescription medicines.
Joshua Resnick
Managing Director of RA Capital Management
Josh is co-founder and chief executive officer of Ataxion, and previously served on the board of CoStim Pharmaceuticals, which was sold to Novartis in February 2014. He is also an attending physician in emergency medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital as well as an instructor at Harvard Medical School. Prior to joining Atlas, Josh was a partner at Prism Ventures.
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About Caraway Therapeutics, RA Capital Management: RA Capital Management is an investment advisor specializing in the life-sciences and drug development sectors.
Jordan Smith
Founder & Board of Directors of Lattis Surgical
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About Lattis Surgical: The Lattis team developed a Contained Tissue Extraction (CTE) device, using bladeless technology.
Ilaria Grizzi
Director, System Integration of Illumina
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About Illumina: Illumina is an innovative technology and revolutionary assays aiming the analyze genetic variation and function.
Jay Bergeron
Director of Pfizer
Jay Bergeron is Director, Translational and Bioinformatics, at Pfizer and responsible for informatics support for Clinical Research and Precision Medicine.
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About Pfizer: Pfizer provides access to safe and effective and affordable medicines and health care services.
Julia Brosnan
Director, External Collaborations and Scientific Alliances of Pfizer
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About Pfizer: Pfizer provides access to safe and effective and affordable medicines and health care services.
George Bashirians
Director, Diagnostics Lead of Pfizer
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About Pfizer: Pfizer provides access to safe and effective and affordable medicines and health care services.
Amir Zur
Sr. Director, Head of Products of Digital Health of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries
Amir Zur is a Sr. Director, Head of Products of Digital Health in Teva Pharmaceuticals, Mr. Zur leads the digital products roadmap, development life-cycle and quality to build Drug-Device Combination and Medical Device products to improve outcomes and treatments to patients. Previously at Teva, he led the teams who built a novel innovative product from scratch and established digital foundations, processes and transformation in the company. The product was recently approved by the FDA as the first of its kind in respiratory and in the entire Health industry. During his career Amir held vast leadership roles as an executive manager for more than 20 years in the digital industry both global large and small companies.
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About Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Teva Pharmaceutical Industries is a pharmaceutical company specializing in the development, production and marketing of generic.
Martin Jackson
Member of the Board of Directors of NaviHealth
Martin Jackson is the Board Director DispalyLink.Martin was, until September 2010, VP, Technology at Plastic Logic. Plastic Logic is using its proprietary technology leadership in plastic electronics to create a range of products enabling information access, organization, and consumption. At Plastic Logic Martin has responsible for the Cambridge technology centre, who have the core role in developing plastic electronics technology, and was actively involved in representing the company at numerous conferences and UK government initiatives. Prior to joining Plastic Logic in 2008 Martin was CTO at Artimi, a fabless semiconductor company that delivered high speed wireless connectivity in portable consumer devices. Prior to joining Artimi in 2006, Martin was CTO at Frontier Silicon, a fabless semiconductor company which pioneered digital broadcasting and achieved 70 percent market share.Prior to Frontier Silicon, he was CTO of leading DSL semiconductor company GlobespanVirata, which later merged into Conexant Corp. He began his work at Virata in 1994, when it was in a start-up phase and he served as VP engineering, Chief Technology Officer and a Board director. Martin was instrumental in the company’s merger with Globespan in 2001. Martin has co-founded four start-ups.He holds a First-Class Honours Degree with Distinction in Electronic Engineering from Cambridge University.
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About 8power: NaviHealth partners with health plans, health systems and post-acute providers to manage the entire continuum of post-acute care.
Andreas Bender
Non Executive Director of PharmEnable
Andreas Bender is a Lecturer for Molecular Informatics with the Centre for Molecular Informatics at the University of Cambridge. Until April 2010 he was an Assistant Professor for Cheminformatics and Pharmaceutical IT with the Leiden / Amsterdam Center for Drug Research and Head of the Pharma-IT Platform at Leiden University. In his work, he is involved with the analysis of various kinds of bioactivity data and the generation of property prediction models, mainly for small molecules.
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About NUVISAN GmbH, PharmEnable, University of Cambridge: PharmEnable has developed a rapid and cost effective way to identify better chemical starting points to drive the discovery.
Chris Ballesteros
Senior Director, Business Development and Sales Enablement of OM1
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About OM1: OM1 is a healthcare technology company that leverages real-world clinical data for medical research and personalized medicine.
Roumen Radinov
Director, Process Chemistry of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals
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About Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals: Alnylam Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization.
Kirk Brown
Director, CNS Early Development of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals
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About Alnylam Pharmaceuticals: Alnylam Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization.
John Leonard
President , Chief Executive Officer & Member Board of Directors of Intellia Therapeutics
After a 30-year career in pharmaceutical R&D, John Leonard retired from his position as Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Research and Development at AbbVie in 2013. Inspired by the opportunity to work with a new therapeutic modality and form a new company, he returned to his life’s passion and joined the Intellia team to direct the research and development effort to make CRISPR/Cas9 technology into a therapeutic reality. John is among the leading R&D executives who have led breakthrough medicines through their discovery, development and launch into blockbuster drugs. While serving as the Global Head of Pharmaceutical R&D at Abbott Laboratories, John oversaw the development of numerous novel therapeutics. His ground-breaking work with HIV protease inhibitors Norvir® and Kaletra® led to new treatment paradigms for AIDS, his years of work with Humira® made it the all-time top-selling drug worldwide, and he led significant growth of the R&D pipeline at Abbott and Abbvie. John’s teams were twice recognized with the prestigious Prix Galien Award for excellence in pharmaceutical research. In addition to serving on the Board of Directors of Intellia, John serves on the Board of Directors of QuintilesIMS (NYSE:Q) and Chimerix (Nasdaq:CMRX). He received his M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine followed by a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health.
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About Intellia Therapeutics: Intellia Therapeutics is a genome editing company that develops curative gene-editing treatments.
Silvia Caballero
Associate Director, Infectious Diseases of Vedanta Biosciences
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About Vedanta Biosciences: Vedanta Biosciences is a developer of immunotherapies designed to treat immune-mediated and infectious diseases.
Nicholas Galakatos
Director of Praxis Precision Medicines
Nicholas Galakatos, PhD, has been Managing Director of Clarus Ventures since the firm’s inception in 2005. He has over 21 years of industry and investment experience in the healthcare sector, including being a General Partner in a healthcare venture capital firm since 2000. From 1997 to 2000, Nicholas Galakatos was Vice President of New Business at Millennium Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: MLNM) and a member of the Management Team. During that time he co-founded Millennium Predictive Medicine and TransForm Pharmaceuticals, where he was Chairman. Prior to Millennium he was an Associate at Venrock Associates focusing on early stage biotechnology investments. Prior to Venrock he was Head of Molecular Biology Research at Novartis (formerly Ciba). Nicholas Galakatos earned his PhD in Organic Chemistry from MIT and performed his post-doctoral studies at Harvard Medical School. Nicholas Galakatos represents Clarus on the Board of Directors of Aerovance, Link Medicine, Nanostring, and Taligen. In addition, he is the Lead Director at Affymax (NASDAQ:AFFY) and is a Director of Aveo, and Portola. Previous directorships include Caliper (NASDAQ: CALP), Critical Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CRTX), Millennium Predictive Medicine (acquired by Millennium), Syrrx (acquired by Takeda), TransForm (acquired by J&J) and Hypnion (acquired by Eli Lilly).
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About Blackstone Group, Praxis Precision Medicines, The Blackstone Group Inc: Praxis Precision Medicines offers drug development services.
Richard Durbin
Informatics Director of Congenica
Richard is a Group Leader of the Human Genetics Programme at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Member of EMBO. A pioneer in the industry, he has developed sequence data analysis tools that are now standards in the field. His current research focuses on human genetic variation by large scale genome-wide re-sequencing. Richard has led the international 1000 Genomes Project and the UK10K Genome Project, and has made significant contributions to the Ensembl resource for vertebrate genome annotation, and the TreeFam and Pfam databases.
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About Congenica: Congenica is a biotechnology company that provides a diagnostic decision support platform.
Matthew Hurles
Scientific Director of Congenica
Matt is Senior Group Leader at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and a leader in the Deciphering Developmental Disorders, 1000 Genomes and UK10K projects. He has pioneered the analysis of whole exomes in clinically relevant disorders that previously failed diagnostic methods, and has led an initiative to characterise structural variation in the human genome, and integrate this knowledge into disease and population genetic studies. Matt has been awarded the Balfour Lecture by the Genetics Society and the Crick Lecture prize for accomplishments in genetics by the Royal Society.
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About Congenica: Congenica is a biotechnology company that provides a diagnostic decision support platform.
Luke Hares
Technology Director of CMR Surgical
Before co-founding CMR he worked for product design companies in the UK and the US, where he worked on medical devices, robotics, ASIC developments and consumer products. Luke believes the best devices are created by combining a detailed knowledge of the unmet needs of the users with the creative application of a broad knowledge of available technology. Regular contact and interaction with the users of the product is essential for this process. Luke is responsible for leading the CMR technology team and has overall responsiblilty for the technology strategy of the company. He is accustomed to championing ideas, communicating technically complex ideas and designing and managing the development of complex systems.
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About CMR Surgical: CMR Surgical is developing the next-generation surgical robotic system for minimal access surgery.
David Brown
Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Healx
David Brown has 40 years experience in the pharmaceutical / biotechnology industry both in research and in senior executive roles. He served with 4 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies: Zeneca, Pfizer, GlaxoWellcome, and Hoffman La-Roche. Whilst at Pfizer he was named co-inventor on the patent for Viagra, and for 8 years he led the team that invented and developed Viagra through to proof of clinical efficacy in male impotence. The drug is also marketed for treatment of pulmonary hypertension under the trade name Revatio. He also had a pivotal role in the discovery of Relpax, a treatment for migraine. Together these drugs have achieved sales of over $30 billion. While at Roche in Switzerland, he was a Director of the company and, as Global Head of Drug Discovery, he had responsibility for productivity of over 2000 scientists at Roche’s five research sites in the USA, Europe and Asia. David subsequently co-founded antibody company Crescendo Biologics and serves on the boards of Healx Ltd (Chair), ProFactor Pharma Ltd (Chair) and Babraham Institute Enterprise Ltd (Chair). He is a Trustee (Director) of two charities, Antibiotic Research UK, dedicated to solving the looming problem of antibiotic resistance; and Friends of Manjushree Vidyapith School and Orphanage, a charity he co-founded in 2005 to help destitute orphans in South Tibet.
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About Healx: Healx is an AI-powered, patient-inspired technology company, pioneering the next generation of drug discovery for rare diseases.
Ian Roberts
Director of Therapeutic Technology of Healx
As senior investigator at the MRC Cancer Cell Unit, Cambridge, Ian lead the development of molecular cytogenetic and genomics approaches for the discovery of disease genes in small round blue cell tumours, and cervical carcinoma. During this time Ian developed algorithms for copy number imbalance analysis and integration with expression data using array based techniques. Following a move to industry, as Head of Informatics at Population Genetics Technologies Ltd Ian lead the development of Next Generation DNA Sequencing (NGS) variant discovery pipelines. Ian continued to develop NGS based variant discovery workflows as Senior Bioinformatician at 14M Genomics, before joining Healx in 2016.
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About Healx: Healx is an AI-powered, patient-inspired technology company, pioneering the next generation of drug discovery for rare diseases.
Shankar Balasubramian
Co-Founder and Director of Cambridge Epigenetix
Sir Shankar is Founder of two companies and the principal inventor of the leading next generation human genome sequencing technology core to all Illumina sequencing platforms, estimated to be worth >$30BN. Sir Shankar’s technology has made routine, accurate, low-cost sequencing of human genomes a reality, has revolutionised biology and accelerated the development of genomic personalised medicine. Sir Shankar is the Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. His awards include the Royal Medal (2018), the RoyalSociety Mullard Award (2009), The BBSRC Innovator of the year (2010) and the Tetrahedron Prize (2013). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences and a member of EMBO.
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About Ahren Innovation Capital, Cambridge Epigenetix: Cambridge Epigenetix is using epigenetics to reduce several routine & important diagnostic tests for common cancers to a simple blood draw.
Martin Murphy
Associate Director of Cambridge Epigenetix
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About Cambridge Epigenetix: Cambridge Epigenetix is using epigenetics to reduce several routine & important diagnostic tests for common cancers to a simple blood draw.
Alon Rivel
Director of Marketing of Outcomes4Me
Alon Rivel has been the Director of Global Sales & Marketing at Jack’d since March 2018. He first joined the company as the Brand Manager for Jack’d in October of 2016 and was then promoted to Director of Global Marketing in March of 2017. Alon heads the entire marketing, advertising sales, & creative departments for all brands and products within the Online Buddies umbrella internationally. Alon is a marketing & advertising media sales, buying, & planning professional with expertise in all aspects of digital, TV, mobile/tablet, radio, and print mediums. He has held roles in some of the biggest brands in the industry such as The New York Times, OMD, and Bloomberg. Alon was raised in NYC and brings that attitude and energy to the Online Buddies Boston office. He has an undergraduate degree with a double major in Communication & Legal Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst which he completed with highest honors. He is also IAB Certified in Digital Media Sales as of 2015.
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About Outcomes4Me: Outcomes4Me is a developer of a free mobile app and platform to navigate cancer treatment and care.
Michael J. Ryan
Director of ClearPoint Neuro
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About ClearPoint Neuro, Pulmonx: ClearPoint Neuro is a platform neuro company that enables therapy for neuro disorders with pinpoint accuracy.
Julie Legault
Executive Director, Founder of Amino Labs
Julie legault is the creative director, founder and ceo of amino labs inc, the company pioneering accessible bioengineering in the home and school. As a designer, julie works to make scientific and technological innovations approachable to the public, crafting experiences and products that invite culture shifts. She holds a master of art from the school of materials at the royal college of art (uk), degrees in both design technology and arts from concordia university (canada), and a masters of science from the mit media lab, massachusetts institute of technology(usa). She has taught at birmingham’s institute of art and design (uk) and worked with multi-nationals (aston martin, nokia, bombay sapphire,audi, etc), , museums, and pop stars like rihanna and imogen heap to develop smart materials, wearable technologies, and interactive art.
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About Amino Labs: Amino Labs is a biotechnology company that aims to make genetic engineering accessible to everyone.
Anya Roy
Managing Director of Syrona Health
Anya Roy is the co-founder of Syrona Health.
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About Syrona Health: Syrona Health is a personalised digital health platform for Chronic Gynaecological/Uterine Conditions like Endometriosis, PCOS etc.
Oriane Chausiaux
Founder Director – CSO, Serial Entrepreneur of Heartfelt Technologies
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About Heartfelt Technologies: Heartfelt Technologies are developing the only home-based heart failure monitor that does not require patient interaction or compliance.
Steven Van Vooren
Marketing Director of UgenTec
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About UgenTec: UgenTec delivers an independent diagnostic platform to help molecular labs with their DNA (PCR) analyses.
Paul Bailey
Non-Executive Director of Bailey Fisher Executive Search
Paul co-founded Bailey Fisher Executive Search in 1998 and led the growth of the business as Managing Director for 20 years during which time he built the board and management teams for some of the most innovative companies to have emerged from the European technology market. After a successful exit in July 2018, he took on the role of Executive Chairman. Paul was named in the 2016 Maserati 100 and was recognised as one of the most influential business people in Cambridge in 2017. He has held advisory roles with NESTA Impact Investments and New Wave Ventures. Paul joined Martlet Capital in 2019. He is also currently Entrepreneur in Residence at Cambridge Enterprise.
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About : Bailey Fisher is an independent executive search firm finding & attracting individuals who have a fundamental impact on business growth.
Glenn Barnes
Associate Director, Data Standards of Global Specimen Solutions
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About Global Specimen Solutions: Global Specimen Solutions operates “GlobalCODE,” a data-management system for compiling specimen data and processes.
Kate Hudson-Farmer
Director, Front-End Innovation, Drug Delivery of Medicom Innovation Partner
Kate Hudson-Farmer is Director, Front-End Innovation and Drug Delivery at Medicom Innovation Partner.
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About Medicom Innovation Partner: Medicom Innovation Partner is a provider of device strategy, product design and development services.
Andrew Southan
Chief Executive and Executive Director of Metrion Biosciences
Andy has over 25 years’ experience in life science research, including 14 years in the CRO sector. In 1991 he received his PhD in Pharmacology from the University of London (UK), investigating the effects of anaesthetics and high pressure on CNS potassium channels. Following a move to industry Andy worked as a brain slice electrophysiologist supporting ion channel-based CNS programmes at Wyeth (UK), before moving to Imperial College London where he published the first patch-clamp recordings from cerebellar inhibitory nerve terminals. At CeNeS Pharmaceuticals he performed CRO services (hERG, nAChR) and internal research on HCN and two-pore channels. He subsequently established the electrophysiology laboratory for Ionix Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on identifying novel pain therapeutics, where he worked on Nav, Cav and mechanosenstive ion channels. Before joining Metrion Andy spent 12 years in leadership roles at BioFocus and Charles River managing stand-alone projects, multi-year collaborations and fully integrated drug discovery programmes.
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About Metrion Biosciences: Metrion Biosciences is a Contract Research Organization (CRO) that is located in the world renowned Cambridge biocluster.
