Agenda
17:00 – 17:30 Arrival
17:30 – 19:00 Panel discussion
19:00 – 20:00 Networking
Join us for the next Imperial Founders Forum on Wednesday 23 October 2024, hosted by the Commercial team, Enterprise and Professor David Klug (Associate Dean for Enterprise in the Faculty of Natural Sciences).
For this in-person session, we will have the special participation of Robin Carr (CEO Myricx Bio Ltd.), Richard Craster (Co-founder Quaisr Ltd.), Mike Romanos (Co-founder Microbiotica Ltd.), Thrishantha Nanayakkara (R&D Director Permia Sensing Ltd.) and, Peter Cawley (Associate Dean for Enterprise – Faculty of Engineering, Imperial College London).
The Forum is open to all academic staff, particularly those who are either active or curious about commercialisation and/or increasing the non-academic impact of their work. Come and share your knowledge in entrepreneurship, engage in networking and create connections. The theme will be Pivoting Your Spinout: When, Why and How.
More about the Imperial Founders Forum
The Forum aims to develop a vibrant community of entrepreneurs and academics engaged in impact beyond academe. This informal grouping is open to all academic staff, particularly those who are either active or curious about commercialisation and/or increasing the non-academic impact of their work. The intention is to create a self-supporting community of academic entrepreneurs able to provide, guidance, advice, experience, contacts and support to each other.
Business leaders and Imperial academics will be invited to come together over a series of forum sessions to share knowledge in entrepreneurship, engage in networking and create connections.
Panel speakers
Vishal Gulati, MD co-founded Recode Ventures in 2022 after nearly three decades as a physician, scientist and venture capitalist. During his investment career, Vishal has backed over 40 companies developing groundbreaking treatments for unmet medical needs and has served on boards of numerous public and private companies. His work has supported the launch of innovative drugs, devices, and digital health products, impacting patients’ lives in nearly 100 countries.
Vishal’s training in medicine and biomedical sciences gives him unique insight to spot emerging technology platforms with the potential to transform healthcare. He was one of the early investors in successive emerging platforms such as genomics, computational biology, and the convergence of imaging and machine learning.
At Recode, Vishal’s investments include Sensible Biotechnologies (novel mRNA therapeutics), Nanograb (precision gene targeting), Probably Genetic (rare disease diagnosis), Lab Genius (in-silico antibody engineering) and Waypoint Bio (spatial imaging for immuno-oncology).
Some of his earlier investments include Evonetix (semiconductor platform for gene synthesis), Chemify (chemical code for drug discovery), Infinitopes (cancer vaccines), Clue (reproductive health), Ieso Digital Health (mental health, LLMs), Quit Genius (Pelego) (abuse and addiction), Zoe (microbiome), Kheiron (ML, medical imaging), Arctoris (robotics), Turbine (computational biology), Relation Therapeutics (ML/drug discovery).
Vishal’s direct investment experience includes over 15 years spent at leading venture capital firms, DFJ-Esprit (Molten Ventures), Atlas Venture and Oxford Science Enterprises. He has since been invited to serve as independent chair/member of investment committees of other healthcare funds, including Cancer Research Horizons, KHP Ventures and University of Cambridge Ventures. Vishal’s access and influence are expanded further by his advisory roles at the Francis Crick Institute, Reuben College, University of Oxford, British Heart Foundation, and RAND (Europe).
After training as a physician, Vishal pursued his postgraduate training and research at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford and Imperial College where he also held a visiting faculty position from 2003 to 2008. He is a recipient of several academic awards, including two Medical Research Council fellowships, the prestigious UNESCO MCBN Fellowship and the Rhodes Scholarship.
Karolina Zapadka, PhD
Life Science Investor, Parkwalk
Karolina has nearly a decade of experience in investing and building life sciences and healthcare companies within the Cambridge Cluster. Currently, she is an investor at Parkwalk Advisors (“Parkwalk”), one of the UK’s leading growth EIS fund managers, backing world-changing technologies emerging from UK universities and research institutions. Parkwalk invests in businesses creating solutions to real-world challenges, with IP-protected innovations, across a range of sectors including life sciences, AI, quantum computing, advanced materials, genomics, cleantech, future of mobility, medtech and big data. Parkwalk has raised over £500m and invested in over 180 companies; Parkwalk is part of a FTSE 250 sector specialist group with £1.2bn in net assets.
Karolina sits on the boards of five life science companies in Cambridge, covering platform technologies, genomics, target discovery, and therapeutics. Prior to joining Parkwalk, she co-founded and successfully delivered the first life sciences startup accelerator in Cambridge, nurturing a portfolio of 20 early-stage ventures in biotech, techbio, tools, medtech, and digital health, which raised over £68m. She played a pivotal role in securing seed and Series A investments from a stellar syndicate of investors.
Her career began as a scientist at a leading biopharmaceutical company, where she contributed to the development of several pre-clinical and clinical phase therapeutics. Before this, she worked as an academic scientist, publishing her research findings in peer-reviewed journals. Karolina holds a PhD in protein folding (diabetes and neurosciences) from the University of Cambridge and conducted postdoctoral research in drug development at the University of Cambridge and AstraZeneca (MedImmune). The majority of her research work focused on biologics associated with metabolic diseases.
Carmine Circelli
Director – BPC Direct Investments (Life Sciences)
At BPC, Carmine has led the development of the direct life sciences investment business and built a portfolio of 14 companies. He is also a top decile investor with is previous fund (Northern VCT 2019 vintage) on a realised returns basis (DPI = 0.49, MoIC = 3.6x & xIRR = 29%).