Cambridge Enterprise, the University's commercialisation office, has announced that Dr Mike Lynch, one of Britain's most successful technology entrepreneurs, has joined its Board of Directors, effective 20 September 2010.

Dr Mike Lynch read Natural Sciences at Christ’s College, Cambridge and went on to complete a PhD in mathematical computing, followed by a research fellowship in adaptive pattern recognition.

In 1996, he founded Autonomy, the UK’s largest software company by market capitalisation and a member of the FTSE 100. The company specialises in Meaning Based Computing, a unique set of technologies which enable the searching and processing of structured and unstructured information to provide the most relevant content for users.

We are delighted to have an entrepreneur of Mike’s standing join the Cambridge Enterprise Board of Directors. His success is a wonderful example of the impact that ideas originating from Cambridge have the world over.

Teri Willey

The company has joint headquarters in Cambridge and San Francisco, and counts amongst its customers Coca-Cola, the BBC, Boeing, Adobe and the New York Stock Exchange.

“We are delighted to have an entrepreneur of Mike’s standing join the Cambridge Enterprise Board of Directors,” said Chief Executive Teri Willey. “His success is a wonderful example of the impact that ideas originating from Cambridge have the world over.”

Dr Lynch has held a number of advisory and board roles in the venture capital industry and is currently a non-executive director of the BBC. He was named the Confederation of British Industry’s Entrepreneur of the Year, the European Business Leaders Awards’ Innovator of the Year for pioneering new approaches to search and information processing technology, and Management Today’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2009. He won an IEE Award for Outstanding Achievement and was awarded an OBE for Services toEnterprise. He is also a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Lady Margaret Beaufort Fellow of Christ’s College and the author of a number of academic papers on the subject of Pattern Recognition and Signal Processing.

“I am very pleased to be joining the Cambridge Enterprise Board,” said Dr Lynch. “Cambridge research has the ability to transform the world, and I am happy to be working with the UK’s leading technology transfer office in order to help that research find commercial partners.”