Our Investment Committee

John was CFO of DisplayLink Corp, a market-leading USB graphics software and semiconductor business, from 2011-20, when it was acquired by Synaptics In. He has been actively involved in the Cambridge technology scene for over 35 years and has held senior management roles and/or been an investor in a number of start-ups, many of which have resulted in successful exits or IPOs. Previously, John was CEO of Velocix, a leading provider of content delivery network solutions, and successfully exited the business to Alcatel-Lucent.

Barbara has a broad range of commercial, fund-raising and general management experience, with many years of business development in the biotech sector. She is currently Chief Business Officer at Autifony Therapeutics and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Francis Crick Institute, where she helps run the KQ Labs accelerator for data-driven health start-ups. She also chairs the LifeArc Seed Fund Investment Committee. She has a BA and DPhil in chemistry from the University of Oxford and holds a Sloan Fellowship from London Business School.

Pam is an adviser in health care systems and digital health working in the UK and USA. She is a Fellow of the Judge Business School at the University and an angel investor in health technology start-ups. She is Chairman of Cambridge Angels, sits on a number of boards including Crown Place VCT, and also advises health technology accelerators in the UK.

Specialising in medical devices, Iris has been involved in technology innovation, commercialisation and market expansion to India for two decades. She co-founded UltraShape, acquired in 2012, and opened MetaCure’s Indian operations. Iris chairs Good Relations India (GRI), a market entry and positioning advisory, which brought to India companies such as M&S, SunLife, Virgin Atlantic, Apple and numerous tech start-ups. She is Chairman of London Business School HealthTech Challenge and of Imperial College Seed Fund.

John has a successful track record as a Director and CXO of high tech and clean tech companies, having grown and sold several start-ups. He was responsible for CMR Fuel Cells’ London Stock Exchange AIM listing, and was Director of Embedded Software at ARM plc. John founded and sold Micrologic Solutions to ARM plc and has negotiated IP licensing, outsourced manufacturing, distributor and JV agreements globally. John has a Masters’ degree in Engineering Science from the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of The Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Andrew is a computer systems engineer and entrepreneur. He is the former director of the Microsoft Research laboratory in Cambridge.

Richard was Deputy Director of Cambridge Enterprise and obtained funding for and established the first seed fund, the Challenge Fund. He has a substantial track record in spinning out companies, including Solexa, Entropic and Kudos, and technology licensing, as well as establishing consultancy and collaborative projects with industry. He has extensive board experience of early stage companies.

Patrick is a clinician scientist and in 2012 was appointed Regius Professor of Physic and Head of the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Director of Cambridge University Health Partners, the Academic Health Sciences Centre for Cambridge. Patrick has been centrally involved in a series of discoveries that have revealed how changes in oxygenation are sensed, and how genetic alterations cause kidney disease. He currently holds a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award and is an NIHR Senior Investigator Emeritus. He has a research group in the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research. Patrick is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Diarmuid joined Cambridge Enterprise as Chief Executive in August 2021. Prior to this, Diarmuid was Director of Trinity Research and Innovation with responsibility for both the Research Development Office and the Office of Corporate Partnership and Knowledge Exchange. In that role he led the establishment of the University Bridge venture fund, which is ranked in the world’s top five collaborative university funds, according to Global University Venturing.

While at Trinity, Diarmuid was also the Executive Director of CRANN, an internationally recognised centre of excellence for nanotechnology and materials science research.

He has held senior management roles in several university-founded start-up companies, including NTera, Xoliox, and Deerac Fluidics.

Diarmuid was a Research Fellow at Princeton University. He has a PhD in Physics from the University of Sheffield and a degree in Materials Science from Trinity College Dublin.

Heather has a broad range of experience encompassing fundraising, marketing, product strategy and business management. As CEO of Transversal, a Cambridge-based tech company, she was instrumental in its journey from start-up to acquisition by Verint Systems in 2019. She is currently VP of Product Strategy and GTM at Verint, responsible for driving the global strategy for their Knowledge Management portfolio. Heather has an MPhil from Cambridge University in European Literature.

Andrew has 35 years’ experience in co-founding and building start-up businesses in the biotechnology sector in the UK and USA. He has served in chairman, non-executive and executive roles with UK and US biotech start-up companies, including Celltech, Cantab Pharmaceuticals, Hexagen, Signature Bioscience, Novacta, Ionix Pharmaceuticals, NeurAxon, Syntaxin, Synosia, Kymab, Bicycle Therapeutics, 14M Genomics, PredictImmune, PolyProx Therapeutics and LoQus23 Therapeutics. He also served as a venture partner within venture capital firms Abingworth and Syncona.

Paul first joined Cambridge Enterprise in 2001 and returned after he completed his time with Health Enterprise East in 2009. Paul has considerable experience of technology transfer in both the biotech and medtech sectors.

Steve is Emeritus Professor in Information Engineering and former Senior ProVice Chancellor. He is expert in spoken language systems, conversational AI and machine learning. He has been involved in a number of successful Cambridge spin-outs including Entropic, Phonetic Arts and VocalIQ.