Celebrating the economic and societal impact created by the world-changing research, ideas and expertise from across the University of Cambridge.
Ideas to Reality brings together members of the University, commercialisation partners and the wider ecosystem for this special reception during which you’ll have the opportunity to:
- Hear the stories behind the impact from the perspectives of those most closely involved, including academics and commercialisation partners working with the support of Cambridge Enterprise.
- Connect with members of the University, industrial partners and members of the business, investment and mentor communities who have contributed so much, both directly and through the unique and powerful ecosystem that exists in and around Cambridge.
Order of evening
18:00 – Arrival and networking
18:30 – Speeches
Dr Diarmuid O’Brien
Chief Executive, Cambridge Enterprise
Diarmuid is Chief Executive of Cambridge Enterprise; the organisation responsible for commercialising research from the University of Cambridge; with a mission to support the translation of leading-edge, world-changing ideas into major societal and economic benefit.
Diarmuid has twenty years’ experience connecting academic based research with the enterprise community. Previously he was the Chief Innovation & Enterprise Officer at Trinity College Dublin, where he had overall responsibility for the development and enhancement of the college’s innovation and enterprise strategy.
Professor Deborah Prentice
Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge
Professor Deborah Prentice became the University of Cambridge’s 347th Vice-Chancellor on 1 July 2023. An eminent psychologist, Professor Prentice carried out her academic and administrative career at Princeton University, which she first joined in 1988.
She rose up through the academic ranks and took on administrative responsibilities of increasing scope, chairing the Department of Psychology for 12 years, serving as Dean of Faculty for three years, and then serving six years as Provost, with primary responsibility for all academic, budgetary and long-term planning issues. Her academic expertise is in the study of social norms that govern human behaviour.
Professor Andy Neely OBE
Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations, University of Cambridge
Professor Andy Neely OBE is Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the University of Cambridge and former Head of the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM). He was the Founding Director of the Centre for Digital Built Britain and the Cambridge Service Alliance.
Professor Neely is widely recognised for his work on the servitisation of manufacturing, as well as his work on performance measurement and management. He received an OBE for services to Research and to University/Industry Collaboration in 2020.
Ajay Chowdhury
Chair, Cambridge Enterprise
Ajay Chowdhury assumed leadership of the Board of Cambridge Enterprise in January 2020, overseeing the strategy, which is tasked with supporting the commercialisation of the ideas that emerge from the University of Cambridge.
He has 25 years of start-up venture experience, building disruptive, new digital businesses in a wide range of industries. He has expertise in mobile, e-commerce, digital media, data analytics, digital retail and government as well as strong functional expertise in sales, strategy development, product development and fundraising. He is also the author of the Kamil Rahman series of detective novels.
Cambridge GaN Devices
A spin-out of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge GaN Devices (CGD) is a fabless semiconductor company that develops a range of energy-efficient GaN-based power devices to make greener electronics possible.
The global power semiconductor market is expected to exceed $50BN. In addition to the multi-million seed fund and Series A and now B private investments, CGD has so far successfully secured four projects funded by iUK, BEIS and EU (Penta). The technical and commercial expertise of the CGD team combined with an extensive track record in the power electronics market has been fundamental in early market traction of our proprietary technology.
Dr Giorgia Longobardi
Co-Founder and CEO, Cambridge GaN Devices
Dr Giorgia Longobardi is the co-founder and CEO of CGD since 2016. She is an experienced engineer with international practice working on GaN power devices. As the inventor of high impact patents in the field of GaN power devices, Giorgia has the unique blend of academic and business know-how as one of her biggest strengths.
During her PhD in power devices at Cambridge University, Giorgia worked on international projects with top semiconductor companies, through which she learned about different cultures operating in this field. She has so far raised more than $30m and has secured a multimillion pipeline of opportunities. She currently leads a team of 50 employees located in five different countries across 3 continents with the aim to deliver to market the most energy efficient power device technology.
Dr Anne Dobrée
Director of Programming, Cambridge Enterprise
Formerly leading the Seed Funds team at Cambridge Enterprise, and now working with the Senior Leadership Team on future projects and planning, Anne has previously overseen strong growth in our investment activities.
Recent highlights include the purchase of Cambridge CMOS Sensors by ams, and the sale of Quethera to Astellas Pharma. Anne has also served on many boards including those of Cambridge CMOS Sensors, Aqdot, Cambridge Touch Technologies, Psyomics, MorphoenIX and Quethera. She was a founding member of Praxis Auril, which supports Knowledge Exchange Commercialisation in the UK.
Gyroscope Therapeutics
Gyroscope Therapeutics is an ophthalmology company developing genetically defined therapies for eye diseases. A significant portion of Gyroscope’s founding intellectual property came from the work of the laboratory of Professor Sir Peter Lachmann at the University of Cambridge. This IP was developed, licensed and invested in by Cambridge Enterprise.
In 2019, Cambridge Enterprise’s sister organisation Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) joined in the Series B funding for Gyroscope Therapeutics, raising £50.4 million.
Dr Chris Hollowood
Chief Executive Officer, Syncona Investment Management Ltd and former Chairman, Gyroscope Therapeutics
Chris has been instrumental in the foundation and development of Syncona’s gene therapy strategy, where it has founded companies focused on the eye, the liver, the kidney, and central nervous system.
He is Chairman of Freeline, SwanBio, Purespring, Mosaic and Forcefield and was also previously Chairman of retinal gene therapies Nightstar, which was sold to Biogen in 2019 for $877 million, and Gyroscope, which was sold to Novartis for up to $1.5 billion in 2022.
Dr Iain Thomas
Head of Life Sciences, Cambridge Enterprise
Iain is Head of Life Sciences at Cambridge Enterprise. His team have spun-out Mission Therapeutics, XO1 Therapeutics (sold to Janssen), Phoremost, Predictimmune, DIOSynVax, Storm Therapeutics, Gyroscope Therapeutics (sold to Novartis), NoBACZ, Zomp, Morphogenix, Apcintex and Z‑Factor (sold to Centessa).
Iain founded Apollo Therapeutics which raised £40m (2016) and $145m (2021) with colleagues. Iain championed the Cambridge–GSK open-innovation drug discovery initiative and founded Ceres-Agritech which has spun-out Fruitcast, Agaricus Robotics, Cellexcel and Robofruit. Iain chairs PraxisAuril the national KE organisation.
Iain holds a BSc from Imperial, PhD form Sydney and MBA form Cambridge.
Professor Steve Young
Entrepreneur and Emeritus Professor of Information Engineering, University of Cambridge
Professor Steve Young has worked in the area of Conversational AI for several decades. In the Engineering Department, he pioneered the use of Hidden Markov Models for speech recognition with the development of the HTK Toolkit.
He founded Entropic in 1995 to build HTK-based voice response systems and sold it to Microsoft in 1999. His later work focussed on the statistical modelling of dialogue which formed the basis for VocalIQ, which he founded in 2011 and sold to Apple in 2015. He was awarded the CBE for services to Software Engineering in 2022.
18:55 – Networking resumes
20:00 – Close