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 Cambridgeshire based Director operating in the Biotechnology 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.
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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.
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.
Ray Edgson
Director of evonetix
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About evonetix: Evonetix is a provider of a desktop platform designed to synthesize DNA at unprecedented accuracy and scale.
Alan Barrell
Non-Executive Director of Eagle Genomics
Alan Barrell has spent almost 30 years in senior executive positions in technology based industries and has become one of Cambridge’s most articulate promoters of entrepreneurship. He was a founder shareholder in Library House Ltd, and is now Entrepreneur in Residence at the University’s Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning and Visiting Professor of Enterprise at the University of Bedfordshire School of Graduate Business Studies. He is also Distinguished Guest Professor at Xiamen University, Visiting Professor at Shanghai College of Science and Technology and at the Fujian International School of Economics and Business, Fuzhou, all in China. He has taught at Tsinghua University Beijing and Minjiang University, Fuzhou City. Other appointments include Senior Enterprise Fellow, University of Essex, International Fellow, Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge, and International Fellow, Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki.
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About Cambridge Associates, Eagle Genomics: Eagle Genomics is a enterprise software solutions company to enable the management, orchestration and exploitation of life sciences data.
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.
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.
Adrian Fisher
Director and Co-Founder of Stemnovate
Co-founder and director, Adrian Fisher has over 20 years experience in the design, development, and application of integrated Microsystems, covering areas ranging from energy storage through to biological analysis. Adrian Fisher heads the electrochemical and micro engineering group in Cambridge in the Centre for Research in Electrochemical Science and Technology, and also within the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise in Singapore.
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About Stemnovate: Drug Screening and Safety Testing Platforms
Jenny Tillotson
Founder & Creative Director of eScent
Jenny Tillotson is the creator and driving force behind eScent, an enabling platform technology and delivery device that emits precise doses of fragrances at the right time, in the right place, depending on context. This is highly scalable technology for sensing and dispensing scent and liquids, providing a new sensory awareness with wide‐ranging applications in fashion, fragrances for luxury brands, wellbeing, digital health, AR/VR, retail, sports, entertainment, learning and adult industry. Jenny spent 14 years at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London developing her award-winning eScent research and was made a Reader in Sensory Fashion in 2013. More recently Jenny has moved to commercialise her research. She formed a company that works at the intersection of fashion, fragrance, smell and wearable technology, co-founded with Professor Andreas Manz, a pioneer of lab-on-a-chip and winner of the EU ‘lifetime achievement’ inventor award for patents on microchip technology for chemical applications. Jenny’s involvement over the past year has specifically been in the area of fine fragrance for the fashion industry and digital health for stress and sleep disorders with a particular focus on leveraging disparate data sources to discover more accurate health-related correlations. The company holds 4 granted patents and 1 pending patent that creates an exclusive market position on wearable sensory data collection related to the sense of smell, pharma and insect control. Jenny has a degree in Fashion Communication from Central Saint Martins and a PhD in interactive olfactory surfaces (Printed Textiles) from the Royal College of Art. She has been a Fellow of the of the Royal Society of Arts since 2009, a Fellow of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust since 2013 and an Associate of the British Society of Perfumers since 2005. Jenny is also a Visiting Scholar in the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge and a STEM Ambassador. Prior to her academic work she was a fashion stylist in the media and worked as a Sensory Designer for Charmed Technology (MIT Media Lab spin-off). She has exhibited internationally, published in science and design journals, consulted for NIKE, Unilever, INTEL, Qualcomm, Toyota and worked with Philips, Cambridge Consultants, The North Face, Adeline André and International Flavours & Fragrances.
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About eScent, The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA): Wearable technology and sensory data collection for preventative healthcare.
Stoyan Smoukov
Co-Principal Investigator & Board of Directors of Xanofi
Stoyan was co-principal investigator in the development of the Xanofi technology. He holds a PhD in Chemistry from Northwestern University. Stoyan has 10 years of polymer research and engineering experience and the past 6 years spent specifically on nanoscience and nanofiber technology.
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About Queen Mary University of London, Xanofi: Xanofi is a nanotech company specializing in the production of nanofiber applications.
Irina Soltamova Solovyev
Director of Cambridge Oncometrix
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About Cambridge Oncometrix: Cambridge Oncometrix aims to save lives by enabling the early detection of prostate cancer.
Maxim Rossmann
Managing Director of Cambridge Oncometrix
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About Cambridge Oncometrix, University of Cambridge: Cambridge Oncometrix aims to save lives by enabling the early detection of prostate cancer.
Jiahao Huang
Co-founder, Director and CFO of Nuclera
A molecular biologist by trade, Jiahao has coordinated multi-national collaborative projects and experienced first hand the limitations of the current provision of DNA. This intimate knowledge of user requirements enables him to guide Nuclera’s commercial operations towards creating the right product for the right market. Jiahao holds a BSc from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Cambridge.
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About Nuclera: Nuclera makes biology accessible through desktop enzymatic protein and gene synthesis.
Thomas Meany
Director of OpenCell
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About OpenCell, Royal College of Art: OpenCell builds biotech labs in shipping containers with the aim of making biotechnology accessible and affordable.
Catherine Beech
Board of Directors of Exonate
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About : Exonate is a biotech company spun out of the University of Nottingham that is focused on alternative splicing of (VEGF) in ophthalmology.
David Alderson
Director of Cogentia Healthcare Consulting
David leads the Pricing and Strategic Market Access practice at Cogentia, a specialist market access and health economic consulting company. Over the last 25 years in the lifescienes industry, David has worked for GSK, Novartis, and Medimmune (Cambridge Antibody Technology), as well as Mundipharma and several market access consulting companies. Since 2009 David has been consulting in market access, leading projects and teams involved in payer research, pricing, strategic market access, value communication and proposition development, as well as advisory boards and training workshops. David has a MBA from Cranfield, and postgraduate Marketing Diploma (Chartered Institute of Marketing), and is also a Chartered Engineer (IMechE).
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About Cogentia Healthcare Consulting: Cogentia Healthcare Consulting, provides market access skills, knowledge and expertise to the pharmaceutical, biotech and device industries.
Richard Saumarez
Director of Fen EP Limited
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About Fen EP Limited: Fen EP Limited is a developer of biomedical device created to prevent sudden cardiac death.
Richard Saumarez
Director of Fen EP Limited
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About Fen EP Limited: Fen EP Limited is a developer of biomedical device created to prevent sudden cardiac death.
