Cambridge Enterprise London Leap – Our Partners and Advisory Board

Julia Hawkins
General Partner

Julia Hawkins is a General Partner at Phoenix Court, home of LocalGlobe, Latitude and Solar funds, where she backs ambitious founders working at the intersection of technology and science to turn breakthrough research into category-defining companies.

Her investments include AccuRx, CoMind, CuspAI, Robeaute, Oxford Nanopore, Spore.Bio and YuLife, businesses translating deep scientific advances into defensible, real-world impact.

Julia is based in London, next door to the Francis Crick Institute, with DeepMind, UCLH, the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Free Hospital nearby.

Balderton Capital is a multistage venture firm with more than 25 years of experience supporting Europe’s best founders from Seed to IPO. It has both early and growth funds and invest across the technology sector, with a proven track record backing AI, fintech, B2B SaaS, digital health, mobility, gaming and marketplace companies.

Zain Waheed
Investor, Early-stage

Zain is an investor on Balderton’s early-stage team, focusing on deeptech investments, with areas of interest including Robotics, AI for science (e.g. life sciences and materials), and physical AI. Prior to joining Balderton, he was a strategy consultant at Boston Consulting Group, where he advised large corporations on digital transformation and the deployment of generative AI. Zain holds an MEng from the University of Cambridge, where he specialised in Mechanical Engineering and Renewable Energy.

At BioInnovation Institute (BII), we accelerate world-class innovation to benefit people and society. Through our programs, Venture Lab, Bio Studio and BII Quantum Lab, we support life science and deep tech start-ups with knowledge, network, infrastructure and funding of up to 3M EUR per project and 1.8 M EUR per start-up. With our expertise, network, funding, and infrastructure, we empower early-stage startups and translational research projects to succeed and believe in the transformative power of innovation.

Karolina Zapadka
Founding Partner, BII Catalyst Funds

Karolina Zapadka is based in London and serves as CEO of Bioinnovation Institute UK. She has spent the past 15 years building a strong network across the UK and European life sciences ecosystem and brings more than a decade of experience in life sciences innovation, including drug discovery, technology transfer, venture building, and equity financing. Previously, she was an investor at a leading UK deep tech investment firm, where she led multiple deals, served on the Investment Committee, and sat on the boards of companies across gene therapy, amyloidosis, neuroscience, genomics tools, and healthtech. She co-founded Accelerate@Babraham, Cambridge’s first life sciences accelerator, and founded the Innovation Forum, a global non-profit for life sciences entrepreneurship. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and an Executive MBA from HEC Paris.

Lord Prior is Deputy Chairman UK and Global Senior Advisor at Lazard.

He is also Chair of Science Capital Imperial, a venture fund aligned with Imperial College and the Institute for Cancer Research, Chair of the Cambridge Life Sciences Council and Chairman of Bit.Bio, Shift Bioscience and Tangram PLC.

He was educated at the University of Cambridge and subsequently qualified as a barrister. He trained in finance at Lehman Brothers and Lazard Freres in New York before holding a number of senior positions within the industrial sector, including British Steel, where he was Commercial Director. He was elected MP for North Norfolk in 1997 and became CEO and Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party.

He served as Chair of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust from 2002 – 2012 before becoming Chair of the Care Quality Commission. In 2015, he was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health and created a Life Peer. In December 2016, he was appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, with specific responsibility for developing industrial strategy. He stepped down from this role in October 2017 to become Chair of University College London Hospitals and subsequently became Chair of NHS England, a Director of Genomics England and a member of the UK Life Sciences Council.

Board member and Chair of Strategy and Investment Committee at Global Foundries. Co-founder and Chair at Genome Therapeutics, and co-founder at Biomodal, both of which are life sciences spin outs from the University of Cambridge. Former venture capitalist focused on software and technology, former Partner at McKinsey and Company, former post-doctoral researcher at University of California, Berkeley. M.A. Electrical Engineering from University of Cambridge and D. Phil in Robotics from University of Oxford.

Kaja is a scientist, serial entrepreneur, and CEO of Echo Labs – a Focused Research Organization powered by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency. She holds a PhD in genetics from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She previously co-founded Gencove and Variant Bio, where she led scientific strategy and built partnerships across 25 global research sites, driving discoveries that have advanced into clinical trial programs and pioneering the first equitable research model in biotech. Before founding Echo Labs, she helped deploy a £300M deep-tech fund at Ahren Innovation Capital. Kaja was also an adjunct professor at the J. Craig Venter Genomics Institute.

Ben is Managing Partner of InHealth Ventures, an early stage healthcare fund that invests across the US, UK, and India. He combines clinical, operational, and investment experience built across frontline care, health system transformation, healthcare analytics, and venture investing.

Ben was a surgical trainee in the NHS before moving into healthcare strategy at McKinsey & Company. He went on to hold leadership roles at Objective Health, a US healthcare data analytics scale-up, helping provider organisations improve clinical and operational performance through data-driven decision making. He later led clinical transformation at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in South London, delivering large-scale service redesign and operational improvement programmes.

At InHealth Ventures, Ben backs AI and tech-enabled services companies with the potential to reshape care delivery at scale. The fund is anchored by InHealth Group, Europe’s largest independent diagnostics and screening provider, providing portfolio companies with access to deep clinical expertise, healthcare infrastructure, and international deployment opportunities.

Daniel joined Novo Holdings in 2024 as a Senior Partner in Growth Investments.

Daniel has 25+ years of global healthcare investment experience covering biotechnology, medical technology and healthcare services. In 2007, he co-founded the healthcare business unit at Polar Capital in London, growing it to over $4 billion in assets under management. Daniel was formerly a Senior Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley in London, an Analyst at ING Barings Furman Selz in New York, and completed his postdoctoral work at DNAX Research Institute in Palo Alto. He currently chairs the UK BioIndustry Association, is a Non-Executive Director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, and was in 2022 appointed as the UK Government’s Life Sciences Envoy.

Daniel received his PhD in Development Biology from the University of Cambridge and his BA in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford.

Susan Hill PhD brings more than 25 years’ experience as an international leader within the biotech, investor and pharmaceutical industries. She founded oncology/immunology company Mestag Therapeutics in 2020, leading through $95m financing, strategic pharma partnerships and organizational build into a clinical biotech. Susan also serves as a Venture Partner at SV Health Investors (London), an advisor to AdBio (Paris) and until recently as a member of the Development Board of Christ’s College, University of Cambridge.

Susan joined Mestag from retinal therapy company Gyroscope Therapeutics (acquired by Novartis for $1.5bn), where she served as Chief Business Officer, bringing critical delivery technology via the acquisition of Orbit Biomedical (Philadelphia) where she was founding Chief Executive Officer. Previously, Susan led strategy and operations as Chief Business Officer of Freeline Therapeutics (now known as Spur Therapeutics, London) and drove transactions in the Business & Corporate Development team at Alexion (Switzerland/US) and during 8 years at Merck KGaA (Geneva) in a series of Global Corporate & Business Development and Portfolio roles.

Susan began her career in strategy consulting/M&A, followed by a stint leading biotech seed investments in ABRDN. She has an MA and PhD from the University of Cambridge and is a previous Fellow of the Securities Institute.

Honorary Professor Medicine, St Mary University | Founder & Director, The Conscience Collective | Former Head of Global R&D at Merck- Serono and CEO of Dimension Therapeutics.

Martin was CEO and Chair of Syncona Investment Management Limited. He co-founded Syncona alongside the Wellcome Trust in 2012.
He has been involved in the foundation of multiple biotech companies and has decades of experience in the European and US venture capital markets.
Previously he was a General Partner at MVM Life Science Partners LLP. Martin has also held roles with 3i plc and McKinsey. He has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge.
Currently, he is Executive Chair of Cora Biosciences and a Director of Century Therapeutics (NASDAQ: IPSC).