Biographies
Board
Ron Peterson
Chairman
Ron is Co-founder of Longbow Capital LLP and the Managing Director at the Boots Centre for Innovation. Ron has more than 20 years experience with Armstrong World Industries, managing global businesses - focussed on turning underperforming or early stage companies into profitable and valued concerns. Ron has been directly involved in the founding of a number of 'high-tech' companies, particularly in the nanotechnology field.
Mark Rowan
Non Executive Director
Mark is a partner of Comvest Limited a company that specialises in early stage technology investment. Previously he was an executive at JPMorgan and American International Group, Inc. He was President of Banque AIG and head of European Corporate Finance. Since 1997, Mark has concentrated on the small business sector providing advice on strategic and structural issues to a broad spectrum of companies. Mark has an MA in Economics from Cambridge University.
John Holden
Non Executive Director
John is Director of Investments at Imperial Innovations plc. Previously he was a Director and Joint Head of the UK Ventures team at ANGLE plc with responsibility for setting up and developing early stage technology based companies. Prior he was an Investment Director with the UK Technology Group at 3i and before that a Corporate Financier in the City. John has a BA in Economics from Durham University and received his MBA with distinction from Cranfield School of Management. John also sits on the board of several Imperial Innovations investment portfolio companies.
Team
Professor Molly Stevens
Professor of Biomedical Materials and Regenerative Medicine, Imperial College London
Molly Stevens is currently Professor of Biomedical Materials and Regenerative Medicine and the Research Director for Biomedical Material Sciences in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College. Research in regenerative medicine within her group includes the directed differentiation of stem cells, the design of novel bioactive scaffolds and new approaches towards tissue regeneration and has attracted funding from the likes of an ERC individual investigator grant and an EPSRC Challenging Engineering grant. She leads the tissue engineering component of Imperial College’s recent £11M Welcome/EPSRC centre of excellence. She publishes regularly in leading academic journals such as the Nature journals and Science and also has a strong track record of IP and translation. She has been recognised by numerous awards both for Innovation and Academic Excellence (TR100 Technology Review’s top 100 innovators; Jean Leray Award from the European Society for Biomaterials; Science Medal from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society; IUPAC Award for Creativity in Polymer Science etc). Click here to visit Molly Stevens at Imperial.ac.uk
Dr Fiona MacLaughlin
Fiona MacLaughlin is a UK registered Pharmacist, and graduated in 1992 with a degree in Pharmacy and a PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of Nottingham.
She has 14 years post-doctoral experience in the life sciences R&D, funding, venture philanthropy and emerging market sectors and worked for over 8 years in the biotech R&D sector in a number of internationally based life science biotechnology companies (Valentis Inc. (formerly GeneMedicine Inc.), Gendel Ltd and Phaeton Ltd ) that focused on the delivery of difficult drugs and biologics. She later joined the Technology Transfer Division of the Wellcome Trust, undertaking business development activities focused on the evaluation and funding of a wide range of early-stage product development opportunities, negotiating and managing over £40 million of programme-related investments on behalf of Wellcome. Further, she led the negotiations for establishing the £45 million “R&D for Affordable Healthcare” fund, a joint venture between Wellcome and the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India which was established and implemented to support R&D of affordable healthcare technologies for the emerging and developing world markets. She was also a member of the team that established the Hilleman Laboratories (a Merck-Wellcome joint venture). More recently Fiona has acted as Strategic Advisor to Tiber Creek Partners, a US based consultancy that assists companies in accessing non-dilutive capital from Government or non-government sources. Fiona has joined RepRegen in February 2011.
Martin Wilkinson
Operations Manager, RepRegen Ltd
Martin Wilkinson is RepRegen’s Operations Manager. He is responsible for the coordination of day-to-day operations, whilst also supporting key business activities, such as running clinical trials, and product manufacturing. A qualified Project Manager with over 25 years' real world experience, Martin has worked for a number of blue chip organisations, management consultancies and a variety of start up SME's.
Anu Solanki
R&D Scientist, RepRegen Ltd
Anu Solanki graduated with a Masters in Materials Engineering in Medicine in 2010. She joined RepRegen in 2010 and is responsible for the day-to-day conduct of various R&D activities for the company relating to the development of key pipeline products including porous scaffolds, putty and synthetic osteochondral plug.
Alexa Kornau
Administration Manager, RepRegen Ltd
Alexa Kornau joined RepRegen in 2009 and is now responsible for the day-to-day administration functions of the business. She finished her BA Business Administration studies successfully at London Metropolitan Business School in 2009. She has various work experience in Administration, Sales and Events Management as well as having done a placement at a shipping recruitment company.
Advisers
Dr Julian Jones
Senior Lecturer, Imperial College London
Julian Jones is a Senior Lecturer at Imperial. His research interests are in biomaterials for regenerative medicine. His work on process development of foamed gel-derived bioactive glass (the first 3D porous scaffold made from bioactive glass) is highly innovative and has produced scaffolds suitable for tissue engineering applications with hierarchical structures similar to that of trabecular bone for which he received the Philip Leverhulme Award. He is the inventor of the gel casting technology which is the focus of the scale-up activity in this project.
Professor Allen Goodship
Institute Director and Professor of Orthopaedic Sciences, University College London
Professor Allen Goodship is Institute Director and Professor of Orthopaedic Sciences at UCL. He is internationally renowned for his translational research in mechanobiology of skeletal tissues has led to changes in the understanding of bone repair, degenerative disease of tendons and the enhancement of integration of orthopaedic prostheses with biological tissues and structures. Recently the research has been directed to interactions between the material properties of skeletal tissue matrices and the structural architecture of the skeletal system. The evaluation of matrix composition and its relationship to genetic and functional factors has led to the interaction with a broader based multidisciplinary team in utilisation of spectroscopic techniques both to enhance the understanding of bone matrix composition, and to explore the application in non-invasive assessment of bone quality.
Professor Justin P Cobb BMBCh FRCS MCh
Chair in Orthopaedic Surgery, Division of Surgery, Oncology, Reproductive Biology and Anaesthetics, Imperial College London
Professor Cobb studied medicine at Magdalen College Oxford, graduating in 1982. He trained in Oxford, London and Brighton. He wrote his master’s thesis on 'Prognostic factors in operable osteosarcoma'. In 1991 he was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon at The Middlesex. He was awarded a Hunterian Professorship in 1992. After 15 years as a consultant at UCLH and Hon Sen Lect at UCL, he joined Imperial as chair of orthopaedics in 2005. His first grant in the field of computer assisted orthopaedic surgery was from the special trustees of The Middlesex and UCH in 1992, together with Brian Davies from Imperial. This led to the Acrobot being developed subsequently, on a Link funded grant. The first human trials of an active constraint robot for joint replacement led on from this. Further development of active, semi-active and passive devices continue, with a current trial underway of navigated hip resurfacing. His principal resarch interests are in the fields of: accuracy and precision in surgery, modelling joint surfaces in health and disease, planning and prediction of how to reconstruct a damaged joint, design of less invasive and better functioning devices, acquisition of surgical skills and functional assessment and cost utility analysis. As chair of Orthopaedics, and clinical lead at hospital, Professor Cobb leads a team of surgeons, investigators and educators training both under- and post-graduate students in surgical skills and the use of IC developed computer based and robotic technologies to improve outcomes. Professor Cobb is on the board of Acrobot, a spinout from Imperial. He is a civilian advisor in orthopaedics to the Royal Air Force. He is on the staff of King Edward VII hospital for Officers, and is orthopaedic surgeon to the royal household.
Simon Newman BSc(Hons) BM MRCS(Eng)
Orthopaedic Surgeon. Academic Clinical Fellow and Specialty Registrar in Trauma and Orthopaedics. North-West Thames Rotation and Imperial College, London.
Simon Newman is an Academic Clinical Fellow and Specialty Registrar in Trauma and Orthopaedics. He undertook his primary medical degree at the University of Southampton where he was also awarded a First Class Honours degree in Immunology. His basic surgical training was completed in the West Midlands before moving to London to undertake his higher specialist training on the North West Thames Rotation. He is an Honorary Clinical Fellow at Imperial College London where he is completing a MD(Res) degree under the supervision of Professor Justin Cobb. His research interests include factors affecting osseointegration and the management of meniscal failure. Simon has been the author of a number of peer-reviewed publications and international presentations.
Jonathan Johnson
Spinal Surgeon, St. Mary's Hospital
Jonathan R Johnson is an Orthopaedic Surgeon specialising in Spinal Surgery. He Qualified at Barts and trained in Trauma and Orthopaedics at UCH and the Westminster Hospitals. His Spinal training took place at UCH and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital with a European Fellowship in Gothenburg Sweden and Oslo Norway. He was appointed to St.Mary's Hospital and Medical School in 1984 and to the staff of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital as a Spine Surgeon in 1992. In 2003 he left to help set up and lead the spinal services at Ravenscourt Park Hospital part of the Hammersmith Hospitals Trust. He is a member of the Honorary Consulting Staff at King Edward the VII's Hospital – Sister Agnes and on the staff of the Princess Grace Hospital. He is a member of the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine (ISSLS) and the North American Spine Society (NASS) He was a founder member of the European Spine Society (SSE) and a founder member and later President of The British Association of Spinal Surgeons
Professor Robert Hill, BSc. MsC. Ph.D. DIC.
Professor of Physical Sciences in Relation to Dentistry, Queen Mary, University of London
My research interests include; Bioactive Glasses Glass (ionomer) Polyalkenoatecements, Glass-ceramics, Materials for Hard Tissue Restoration. Apatites Characterization of apatites, glasses and glass polyalkenoate cements using solid state NMR. I am currently working on new biodegradable cements for use as a degradable bone glue. I established recently the Campus company Bioceramic Therapeutics that is based on strontium releasing bioactive glasses that stimulate osteoblasts and inhibit osteoclasts. I am the UK representative of Technical Committee 4 of the International Congress of Glass that deals with glasses for Medical Applications and I am also the UK representive on Technical Committee 7 that deals with Nucleation and Crystallisation of Glass.