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 United Kingdom based Director operating in the Universities 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.
Carlo Ratti
Director of the Senseable City Lab of Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Carlo Ratti is an Italian architect and engineer who directs the SENSEable City Laboratory, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology research group that explores the “real-time city” by studying the deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics, and their relationship to the built environment. A graduate in engineering at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, France, and at the Politecnico di Torino in Italy, Ratti later earned his MPhil and PhD degrees in architecture from the University of Cambridge, UK. In 2000 he moved to MIT as a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow, working with Hiroshi Ishii at the MIT Media Lab. In February 2008 the SENSEable City Lab presented an installation at MoMA in New York as part of the exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind.” The New York Talk Exchange illustrates the global exchange of information in real-time by visualizing volumes of long-distance telephone and Internet data flowing between New York and cities around the world.
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About Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT is a research university that conducts research and offers educational courses in science, technology, and engineering.
Louise Almond
Associate Director, Process Sciences of Allergan
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About Allergan, Pharmaron: Allergan is a global pharmaceutical company.
Stephen Hawking
Director of Research at Center for Theoretical Cosmology of University of Cambridge
Stephen William Hawking is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author. He is the director of research at the Department for Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics within the [University of Cambridge](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/university-of-cambridge). Hawking attended St. Albans School when he was eleven. He obtained a first class honors degree in natural science from the Oxford University and a Ph.D. in cosmology from the University of Cambridge. After gaining his Ph.D. Hawking became first a research fellow and later on a professorial fellow at Gonville and Caius College. After leaving the Institute of Astronomy in 1973, he came to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in 1979, and held the post of Lucasian professor of mathematics from 1979 until 2009. Hawking has worked on the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed that Einstein’s General theory of relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. His publications include The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime with G F R Ellis, General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey, with W Israel, and 300 Years of Gravity, with W Israel. Among the popular books Hawking has published are his best seller A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, The Universe in a Nutshell, The Grand Design, and My Brief History. Professor Hawking has twelve honorary degrees. He was awarded the CBE in 1982, and was made a Companion of Honour in 1989. He is the recipient of many awards, medals and prizes; is a fellow of The Royal Society; and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Hawking suffers from ALS, a form of motor neuron disease. Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England.
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About University of Cambridge: The University of Cambridge is a public research university based in England.
Robert Wardrop
Executive Director, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance of University of Cambridge
Robert is an economic sociologist and the Executive Director of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, a research group at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Research Fellow and teaches two MBA courses at the Cambridge Judge Business School. Prior to joining Cambridge, Robert had a 30-year career as a financial investor, most recently as a Managing Director of the Anschutz Investment Company. Robert holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, an MSc in Social & Cognitive Anthropology from the London School of Economics, and is currently completing his PhD in Economic Sociology at Cambridge.
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About ABS Global, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge: The University of Cambridge is a public research university based in England.
Nick Saville
Director, Thought Leadership of University of Cambridge
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About University of Cambridge: The University of Cambridge is a public research university based in England.
Stephen Cave
Executive Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence of University of Cambridge
Dr Stephen Cave is Executive Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Philosophy, and Fellow of Hughes Hall, all at the University of Cambridge. Stephen earned a PhD in philosophy from Cambridge, then joined the British Foreign Office, where he served as a policy advisor and diplomat. He has subsequently written and spoken on a wide range of philosophical and scientific subjects, including in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and on television and radio around the world. His research interests currently focus on the nature, portrayal and governance of AI.
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About University of Cambridge: The University of Cambridge is a public research university based in England.
Stephen Cave
Executive Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence of University of Cambridge
Dr Stephen Cave is Executive Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Philosophy, and Fellow of Hughes Hall, all at the University of Cambridge. Stephen earned a PhD in philosophy from Cambridge, then joined the British Foreign Office, where he served as a policy advisor and diplomat. He has subsequently written and spoken on a wide range of philosophical and scientific subjects, including in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and on television and radio around the world. His research interests currently focus on the nature, portrayal and governance of AI.
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About University of Cambridge: The University of Cambridge is a public research university based in England.
Wes Armour
Director of University of Oxford
Wes Armour is associate director at the Oxford e-Research Centre (OeRC). He leads the scientific computing group at OeRC, which has around 10 members. Wes’ grant portfolio spans a range of different funders, reflecting the interdisciplinary projects that the group is involved with. His research interests are strongly focused in scientific computing, specifically the use of HPC and many-core technologies to answer scientific problems or to impact people’s daily lives. Wes’ work focuses are modeling and simulation, digital signal processing, HPC/many-core and real-time computing for big data/data science. Wes has a Master’s of Physics in fundamental particle physics and cosmology and a Ph.D. in lattice gauge theory, the computational description of the strong nuclear force.
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About University of Oxford: Oxford is a world-leading centre of learning, teaching and research and the oldest university in the English-speaking world.
Trudie Lang
Director, The Global Health Network of University of Oxford
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About University of Oxford: Oxford is a world-leading centre of learning, teaching and research and the oldest university in the English-speaking world.
Nick Bostrom
Director of University of Oxford
Nick Bostrom is Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University. He is the founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, a multidisciplinary research center which enables a few exceptional mathematicians, philosophers, and scientists to think carefully about global priorities and big questions for humanity. Nick has a background in physics, computational neuroscience, and mathematical logic as well as philosophy. He is the author of some 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias (Routledge, 2002), Global Catastrophic Risks (ed., OUP, 2008), Human Enhancement (ed., OUP, 2009), and the academic book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (OUP, 2014), which became a New York Times bestseller. He is best known for his work in five areas: (i) existential risk; (ii) the simulation argument; (iii) anthropics (developing the first mathematically explicit theory of observation selection effects); (iv) impacts of future technology; and (v) implications of consequentialism for global strategy. He is recipient of a Eugene R. Gannon Award (one person selected annually worldwide from the fields of philosophy, mathematics, the arts and other humanities, and the natural sciences). He has been listed on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list; and he was included on Prospect magazine’s World Thinkers list, the youngest person in the top 15 from all fields and the highest-ranked analytic philosopher. His writings have been translated into 24 languages. There have been more than 100 translations and reprints of his works.
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About University of Oxford: Oxford is a world-leading centre of learning, teaching and research and the oldest university in the English-speaking world.
Jonathan Lusthaus
Director of The Human Cybercriminal Project at the Extra-Legal Governance Institute of University of Oxford
Jonathan Lusthaus is Director of The Human Cybercriminal Project in the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford. His research focusses on the “human” side of profit-driven cybercrime: who cybercriminals are and how they are organised. In particular, he is interested in issues of trust, cooperation and governance. Jonathan has recently completed a seven year global study on the organisation of cybercrime to be published by Harvard University Press. As part of this research, he has travelled to cybercrime hotspots around the globe and conducted almost 250 interviews with law enforcement, the private sector and former cybercriminals. Jonathan holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Oxford, where he was a Clarendon Scholar.
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About University of Oxford: Oxford is a world-leading centre of learning, teaching and research and the oldest university in the English-speaking world.
Jonathan Lusthaus
Director of The Human Cybercriminal Project at the Extra-Legal Governance Institute of University of Oxford
Jonathan Lusthaus is Director of The Human Cybercriminal Project in the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford. His research focusses on the “human” side of profit-driven cybercrime: who cybercriminals are and how they are organised. In particular, he is interested in issues of trust, cooperation and governance. Jonathan has recently completed a seven year global study on the organisation of cybercrime to be published by Harvard University Press. As part of this research, he has travelled to cybercrime hotspots around the globe and conducted almost 250 interviews with law enforcement, the private sector and former cybercriminals. Jonathan holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Oxford, where he was a Clarendon Scholar.
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About University of Oxford: Oxford is a world-leading centre of learning, teaching and research and the oldest university in the English-speaking world.
Victoria Rusnac
Marketing Director of Nexford University
Victoria Rusnac is Marketing Director at Nexford University. She is a marketing expert with proven expertise in corporate and start-up growth marketing strategies, including branding, performance and product marketing.
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About Nexford University: A next generation online university providing students with access to quality, affordable, dynamic education.
Hugh Hudleston
Commercial Director & Co-Founder of FIXR
Hugh is a founding Director of FIXR. He most recently spent a year doing his MBA at Cambridge University before joining FIXR full time in June 2014. Hugh started his financial career at Matrix Corporate Capital in equity sales. Following Matrix, Hugh became a partner of a corporate advisory boutique, Hawkwood Capital, raising money for private companies. He is also Director of a fast growing visual recognition company, WeSee. Past exploits included launching 2 magazines. He is a keen sailor.
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About FIXR: FIXR is a leading ticketing and event management platform built for fans and organisers.
Sucheta Nadkarni
Director of Cambridge Judge Business School
Professor Sucheta Nadkarni is Director of the Wo+Men’s Leadership Centre, Sinyi Professory of Chinese Management and Head of Strategy & International Business Subject Group at Cambridge Judge Business School. Sucheta’s primary research interests include strategic leadership with a special focus on female rise to corporate boards and executive leadership positions. She has published extensively in leading academic journals in management. She is an associate editor of Academy of Management Journal and Journal of Management. She also sits on the editorial of four other leading academic journals. She has worked on research projects and grants with companies such as Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, Newton Asset Management, BNY Mellon and 30% club. Her research on female rise to boardrooms has been featured in global media outlets including New York Times, Forbes, CNBC, Huffington Post, Reuters, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Scotsman, Economic Times, Times of India, Herald Tribune, Borsen, O Globo, The Times (Kuwait), Business Standard and Folha De Sao Paulo.
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About Cambridge Judge Business School: Cambridge Judge Business School is a business school of University of Cambridge located in the United Kingdom.
Trevor Pereira
Commercial and Facilities Director of University of Kent
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About University of Kent: University of Kent is a economic growth and productivity.
