Enterprise Champions

Sophie Appleby is Community and Office Manager (ideaSpace West).

Kirsten Batcheler is Membership, Marketing and Office Manager (ideaSpace City).

Ben Hartley is Head of ideaSpace, a community of founders and entrepreneurs across three locations in Cambridge – ideaSpace West, ideaSpace City and ideaSpace South.

ideaSpace supports founders, entrepreneurs, innovators and members of the University of Cambridge in exploring ideas, innovations and building start-ups. Initially opened in July 2010 at the Hauser Forum in Cambridge before expanding to include offices in the city centre and Cambridge Biomedical Campus, ideaSpace is a hub for early-stage innovation, providing space and resources to a flourishing community of over 150 people.

As well as helping start-ups create successful businesses and economic value, ideaSpace works with governments, agencies and higher education institutions to develop policies, strategies and programmes to support a thriving start-up sector.

Before joining ideaSpace, Ben founded and ran a company supplying specialist action personnel and equipment to major UK and Hollywood film productions. Ben is also an ex-Royal Navy Officer/Helicopter Pilot and experienced manager in diverse sectors such as film production, events, high-end retail and start-ups.

Ben is a fellow of the RSA and is currently completing an MSc in Performance Psychology.

Benedict is the Impact Facilitator for the Arts and Humanities. His role is to support and enable collaborations between Arts and Humanities researchers and external organisations in public, private and third sectors. He co-ordinates the Arts and Humanities Impact Fund, supports applications to impact and public engagement-related grants and advises on planning activities that allow Humanities research and arts-led thinking to benefit wider society.

Dr Sara Serradas O’Holleran is the Research Strategy Manager of Cambridge Global Challenges – the Strategic Research Initiative of the University of Cambridge that enhances the contribution of its research towards addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a particular focus on the poorest half of the world’s population. Sara’s experience in advancing the contribution of University-generated knowledge towards challenges faced by developing countries was galvanised by her upbringing in Mozambique and fuelled her academic drive in Life Sciences (Microbiology and Neuroscience).

Margaret Thatcher Professor in Enterprise Studies on Innovation and Growth.

Stelios has spent his career researching and teaching on the challenges of innovating and growing across the company lifecycle; topics include Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategy Execution across a number of institutions (CJBS, Georgia Tech, INSEAD, Darden Business School, ALBA). He researches business model innovation, scale-up strategies, and strategic pivots that makes start-up efforts succeed or fail. Stelios holds a MS in E&CE from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), and a Ph.D. from INSEAD in France. Previously he was the Steven A. Denning Chair in Technology and Management at the Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech, and a Fellow of the Batten Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia.

Marko is Reader of Protein Biochemistry. His research group studies protein complexes in growth factor signalling and they have several projects in small molecule drug discovery. His lab uses protein engineering, biophysics and structural biology as their primary methods. Marko also runs a core facility for the provision of growth factors for local stem cell laboratories and he has spun out this expertise into a start-up company, Qkine, where he is the CSO. He has experience in consulting and collaborating with biotech and pharma and in out-licencing of technologies.

Michaël is Reader in NanoManufacturing and Engineering Design and head of the NanoManufacturing group at the Institute of Manufacturing, Department of Engineering.

Andrew Murray is a Reader in Metabolic Physiology in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, where he is Impact/Enterprise Champion. His group study integrated mitochondrial physiology in health and disease, and have a particular interest in how mitochondrial respiratory function is altered in response to tissue hypoxia. Andrew has recent and ongoing collaborations with GSK and AstraZeneca, relating to mitochondrial toxicology and peptide mediators of metabolic function. He has also undertaken consultancy work and been involved in collaborations with biotech SMEs in the UK and Denmark. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, Andrew was involved in the development of a novel ketone ester supplement, and was Company Secretary for the spin-out company that commercialised this work, TdeltaS (https://www.tdeltas.global/).

Tammy Dougan is Life Science and Healthcare Partnership Manager and GSK Partnership Manager at the Strategic Partnerships Office.

Roman is Director of Research at the Institute of Metabolic Science and the Department of Paediatrics. His research aims to support the diagnosis and treatment of metabolic diseases using mathematical modelling techniques with particular focus on diabetes.

Derek is Professor of Infectious Disease Informatics and Director of the Centre for Pathogen Evolution in the Department of Zoology. Derek’s research interests include pathogen surveillance, vaccination, cross-reactive immune response, integration of phenotypic and genetic analyses, and fitness landscapes, comparative evolution and predictability of evolution.

David is a Lecturer in Aquatic Ecology in the Department of Zoology. David’s work focuses on applied freshwater ecology, with a particular emphasis on bivalve molluscs.

Raymond is a Senior Lecturer in Molecular Immunology in the Department of Veterinary Medicine. His research interest is in prion disease pathogenesis, diagnosis and therapeutic strategy.

Paula is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Her primary interests are in the construction and evaluation of (psycho)-computational models of language acquisition, and also in automated corpus analysis (grammatical and lexical acquisition from corpora).

Yrjö is a Professor at the Sainsbury Laboratory. His primary research interest is in understanding the patterning processes involved in plant vascular development.

Mariana is the Innovation & Enterprise Project Officer for the Department of Plant Sciences. Her role is to co-ordinate the CambPlants Hub (www.cambplants.group.cam.ac.uk) by facilitating interactions between plant-related research carried out in the University and industry, as well as outreach activities, with a view to encouraging and developing innovative cross-disciplinary research collaborations.

Matthew is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Plant Sciences. His research focuses on algal and plant physiology and environmental metabolomics.

Aga is the Maxwell Centre Director of Partnership Development, working closely with the Director on strategic planning and delivery of the Maxwell Centre vision and industrial engagement programmes. She is a knowledge broker who facilitates forging new links and collaborations, often interdisciplinary, between Cambridge academics as well as with external partners. Furthermore, Aga is interested in broader context of academic research and its downstream use – innovation and technology transfer, enabling relevant access to University facilities, evidence-based policy, sustainability, public outreach and impact.

Mike is Professor of Computational Physics and Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Computational Methods for Materials Science. He has worked on first principles total energy calculations since 1985, and is the author of the first principles total energy pseudopotential code CASTEP.

Steve is Professor of Reproductive Biology at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. His research interests include placental development and the identification of biomarkers that predict adverse outcome and mouse models of clear cell ovarian cancer.

Maria is Senior Research Manager at the Wellcome Trust–MRC Institute of Metabolic Science. Maria’s role includes supporting the development of major funding applications, strategic relationships and knowledge transfer activities. Maria also focuses on public engagement and developing activities and events in this area.

Maria is an Enterprise Champion for the Institute of Metabolic Science and the Department of Clinical Biochemistry.

Stephanie is the Knowledge Transfer Facilitator for the Faculty of Mathematics, covering both the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) and the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics (DPMMS). Stephanie supports knowledge exchange and collaboration activities between Cambridge Mathematics and external partners such as industry.

John is Professor of Statistics in the Statistical Laboratory. He specialises in statistical analysis at the interface of methodology and applied statistics, and is interested in all applied statistical areas, particularly statistical neuroimaging and statistical linguistics.

Joanna joined the Wellcome Genome Campus as Entrepreneurship and Innovation Centre Manager as part of their vision to establish the Genome Campus as a world-leading innovation ecosystem for Genomes and BioData.

Prior to this Jo spent over 15 years at the Cambridge Judge Business School developing entrepreneurship education. For 10 years she was Deputy Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning and was the Founding Programme Director of the Postgraduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship where she worked with almost 200 aspiring entrepreneurs from across the globe.

Jim is Professor of Molecular Haemostasis in the Department of Haematology. His research focuses on serpin function and dysfunction, and on the regulation of blood coagulation.

Eric is Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Genetics and Senior Group Leader at the Gurdon Institute. His research focuses on non-coding RNA, epigenetics and genome stability.

David is a Senior Lecturer, group leader and Deputy Head (Teaching) in the Department of Genetics. His research interests include indole signalling in E. coli, bacterial antibiotic resistance and the development of a quiescent bacterial cell factory.

Helen is a Research Manager and Knowledge Transfer Facilitator in the Department of Computer Science and Technology.

Chris is a Research Manager and Knowledge Transfer Facilitator within the Department of Engineering.

Philip is the Director of Research and Finance in the Department of Engineering and Deputy Head of Department for Strategy and Operations. He guides the development of research strategies, helps sponsors navigate through the University, helps academics find sponsors and offers advice on commercialisation.

David is a Research Administrator in the Faculty of Education.

Ian is a Reader in Earth and Nuclear Materials in the Department of Earth Sciences. He is an authority on the effect of nuclear radiation on materials and has developed nuclear magnetic resonance methods to provide an element specific probe of radiation damage and actinide substitution in a range of materials from nuclear fuels and claddings to waste forms.

Tuomas is Professor of Physical Chemistry and Biophysics in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. His research group is highly interdisciplinary, focusing on the physiochemical properties and behaviour of biological molecules and soft materials.

Yolande is the Knowledge Transfer Facilitator (KTF) for the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge. She supports her academics, at all stages of their career, and across all chemical sciences, in realising the full impact of their research. She also supports external collaborators in partnering and building relationships with the Department and, by connecting with the KTF network, the University at large.

Sam Stranks is a University Lecturer in Energy in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology. His group’s work focuses on the development and understanding of emerging semiconductors for low-cost, transformative electronics applications including light-harvesting (e.g. photovoltaic and detector) and light-emission (eg LED) devices.

Dervila is Co-ordinator of Cambridge Neuroscience, which connects multi-disciplinary neuroscience research and teaching across the University and affiliated institutes to increase fundamental understanding of brain function and enhance quality of life.

Oliver is the Programme Manager for CamBridgeSens, which strengthens the University community in sensor-related research across engineering, mathematics, computer science, chemistry, materials and biotechnology to catalyse sensor innovation and application.

Jane is Co-ordinator of Cambridge Language Sciences, a University of Cambridge Strategic Research Initiative connecting language researchers and practitioners across the humanities, social sciences, biological sciences, computer science and engineering, and spanning University departments and affiliates such as the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Cambridge Assessment. Jane’s role is to build the network in order to facilitate new cross-disciplinary research collaborations.

David is Deputy Director of the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research, Professor of Molecular Neurogenetics and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow. His research interests are in autophagy and neurodegeneration.

Dora Alexopoulou is a Senior Research Associate at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, leading the Education First Unit which promotes research in second language learning of English and innovation in language teaching through a systematic cross-fertilisation between linguistic research and teaching techniques. She is a co-founder of the Cambridge Bilingualism Network, a public engagement initiative to promote the linguistic and cognitive advantages of bilingualism.

Michael is a Senior University Lecturer in the Department of Architecture. His specialities include designing and building structural masonry spans using traditional techniques and new materials.