Cambridge Innovation Capital

Ian Lane focuses on applying AI to scientific discovery in semiconductors and quantum technologies, serves as CogX’s Los Angeles Ambassador, and takes hands-on board roles like Seldon.

Michael Anstey pairs a DPhil in Zoology with co-founding an early-stage biotech targeting protein–protein interactions, backed Bicycle Therapeutics and Nuclera, and co-founded Innovate Cambridge to boost Greater Cambridge's innovation ecosystem.

Paul Anson studied Engineering at Bristol University and worked in the automotive sector before joining Cambridge Consultants, where he led product and process development programmes for consumer goods and healthcare clients. He co-founded Inca Digital Printers, a Cambridge company developing digital inkjet printing equipment that later had a trade sale. He is an active angel investor in tech and life sciences, having invested in over 25 startups as a member of Cambridge Angels, and supports early-stage companies through mentoring, board roles and coaching.

Rob Sprawson is a Partner and CFO at Cambridge Innovation Capital. He has over 30 years of experience in strategic financial advisory services across the pharmaceutical, biotech, technology, and technology consulting sectors, working with boards and shareholders.

Robert Tansley is a trained surgeon-turned-investor who leverages clinical experience, backing major medtechs like CMR Surgical, serving as CMO and translating Cambridge academic research into scalable life sciences companies.

Vin Lingathoti is founder and CEO of a stealth startup and a former venture capitalist. He previously held product leadership roles at Cisco, EMC/Dell, and SunGard, where he built billion-dollar products. As an early-stage investor, he deployed $120M into startups that achieved multiple exits exceeding $1B in aggregate value.

Edward Inns focuses on deep tech, investing in quantum computing infrastructure and error‑correction companies like Riverlane rather than hardware, and explains complex quantum concepts to investor audiences across media.

Andrew Williamson bridges Cambridge academic roots with Silicon Valley experience and, as co-chair of UK review of university spin-outs, shapes policy and commercialization to scale deep tech and life sciences.

Andy Neely is Professor of Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge and serves as Chair of Cambridge University Press & Assessment and of Innovate Cambridge, as well as Vice Chair of Cambridge Innovation Capital. He is also the founder of Anmut and bleeta. His work with boards and governments focuses on the governance of AI, coordination of innovation systems, and maintaining trust and performance amid changes in technology, capital, and legitimacy.

Andy Richards is a founder, director, and active investor across more than 25 healthcare and life science companies, including Vectura and Arakis. He co-founded Chiroscience Group plc and served as an executive director through its 1999 merger with Celltech plc. He holds a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge and is a founder member of the Cambridge Angels.

Damian Crowther trained as a clinician-scientist in Cambridge and Oxford (PhD, FRCP), practiced clinical neurology in Nottingham and Cambridge, and led a basic neuroscience research group at the University of Cambridge for a decade, with an honorary appointment at UCL. He later gained commercial experience as head of early drug discovery at AstraZeneca Neuroscience and co-founded the healthtech startup GPnotebook. Before CIC he was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Oxford Science Enterprises, building neuroscience biotechs.

Erik Langaker is a Partner at A3C Partners in London with over 30 years of international experience in company creation, building, and divestment to both industrial buyers and PE funds. He specializes in entrepreneurship, scaling, software, and technology financing, typically maintaining investment horizons of 10 years or longer. Langaker currently serves as chairman and board director for invested companies and as an industrial advisor to Cambridge Innovation Capital.

Heiner Dreismann holds a master of science in biology and a PhD in microbiology/molecular biology from Westfaelische Wilhelms University in Muenster, Germany, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the French Center for Nuclear Research in Saclay. Early in his career he led genetic research and development at Roehm and Haas in Darmstadt, later joining F. Hoffmann La Roche AG where he held various management roles, including President and CEO of Roche Molecular Systems in Pleasanton, California, from 2000 to 2006. He currently sits on the boards of several public and private life sciences and healthcare companies across the United States, Europe, and Israel.

Ilana Wisby is a quantum physicist and deep tech entrepreneur who was the founding CEO of Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), which she built from a single 2018 patent into a UK quantum company with a 135+ person team across the UK, Japan and Spain and over £100m raised. She has advised UK governments and served on bodies including the UK Business Innovation Forum Council and the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Quantum Computing. She holds a PhD in experimental quantum physics from Royal Holloway and the National Physical Laboratory.

James Chapman is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Cambridge Innovation Capital, working in deep tech across semiconductors, systems, and AI. He holds a PhD from Oxford and has led global engineering organizations of more than 400 people, as well as businesses generating over $500 million in revenue.

John Lee has 25 years of senior financial and general management experience across sectors including polymers, electronics semiconductors, games software, packaging, telecoms, and internet. He has built start-ups into established businesses, raised venture capital funding, and completed exits comprising three IPOs, four trade sales, and two share buybacks, and has led commercial negotiations covering licensing and partnerships. His experience includes executive and non-executive board roles, and he currently volunteers at Citizens Advice Cambridge & District.

Jonathan Milner earned a doctorate in Molecular Genetics at Leicester University after studying Applied Biology at Bath University, where he later worked as a post-doctoral researcher from 1992 to 1995. He subsequently researched the molecular basis of breast cancer at the University of Cambridge in Professor Tony Kouzarides' laboratory, and in 1998 co-founded the antibody supplier Abcam with David Cleevely and Professor Kouzarides. He has supported over 60 companies and helped bring three technology companies to IPO on AIM.

Laurent Jespers has around 25 years of experience in discovery and early-stage clinical development across multiple therapeutic modalities and disease areas. He previously served as Chief Scientific Officer at Xap Therapeutics, held a Vice President role in Biopharmaceuticals and Cell & Gene Therapy at GSK, and was an early employee at Domantis Ltd (later acquired by GSK). He holds an MSc in Chemistry and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Leuven, Belgium, and is an alumnus of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

Martin Frost co-founded CMR Surgical in 2014 and served as CEO, taking the company from inception to global commercialisation of its Versius surgical robot and raising over £250m. He previously held C-suite roles including CEO and CFO of Cambridge-based technology development company Sagentia, which he listed on the London Stock Exchange. He is a qualified Chartered Management Accountant and a graduate of Cambridge University, and currently advises and sits on the boards of several early- and growth-stage technology and life science companies in the UK.

Matt Maynard is Events Manager at Cambridge Innovation Capital, with ten years of experience delivering events and projects for public and private sector organisations. He is the founder of DUSK Empire, a Cambridge-based clothing and events start-up, and BumBumTam, an event brand operating in Cambridge, Manchester and London. He also owns Fresh Tuesdays, a weekly student event brand in Cambridge now in its eleventh year.

Philip Winter is a startup founder and investor who co-founded the hardware company Nebia, which was acquired by Brondell nine years later. He more recently led Supplant, a Cambridge biotech spin-out, serving as interim CEO through its 2025 acquisition. He is a general partner at Latitude Fund, previously worked as a deep tech investor at Creator Fund, and holds an MBA from the University of Cambridge and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Rodrigo Santos is an Entrepreneur in Residence with the Life Sciences team at Cambridge Innovation Capital, with expertise in cell biology and cell technologies across the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors. He previously served as CTO of clock.bio (now clock.health), Entrepreneur in Residence at Novo Holdings, Director of Cell Technologies at Mogrify Ltd, Head of Technology at bit.bio, and Principal Scientist at Horizon Discovery (now Revvity). Santos also participates in several Scientific Advisory Boards and entrepreneurship mentoring programmes.

Rowan Chapman is a co-founder of BEVC, an early-stage venture firm connected to UC Berkeley and UCSF, and of Initiate Studios, a life sciences incubator. She previously headed Johnson & Johnson Innovation for Western North America, Australia and New Zealand, led Healthcare Investing at GE Ventures and Precision Diagnostics at GE Healthcare, and spent over 11 years as a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures. She holds a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and a BA in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, with postdoctoral research at UCSF.

Sir Gregory Winter is a Nobel laureate scientist and pioneer of phage display whose hands-on approach applies directed evolution, antibody and protein engineering, and experimental-design thinking to advance portfolio therapeutics.

Sir Keith Peters is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a founder Fellow and second President of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and his leadership helped develop Cambridge as a centre for clinical research. From 2006 to 2008 he served as Interim Director of the MRC's National Institute for Medical Research and helped initiate the establishment of what became the Francis Crick Institute, where he now consults in clinical science and translational medicine. Between 2005 and 2016 he was a Senior Consultant to the President of Pharmaceuticals R&D at GlaxoSmithKline and has served on science advisory boards of biotechnology companies.

Steve Leonard is CEO of Singularity University, a Silicon Valley-based organization that helps leaders understand and shape the impact of future technologies. He previously founded and led SGInnovate, a Singapore government-owned company supporting deeptech startups, and served as Executive Deputy Chairman of Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority, following senior roles at global technology companies in Europe and Asia. He completed an MIT Sloan School of Management program focused on innovation-led ecosystems.

Ted Briscoe is an academic whose research covers computational and theoretical linguistics and automated speech and language processing, including parsing techniques and models of human language learning. He held an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship (1990–1996) with research at Macquarie University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Xerox European Research Centre in Grenoble, and the Computer Laboratory, and has taught MPhil modules in computer speech and advanced computer science. He co-founded the consultancy iLexIR Ltd in 2004 (which spun out SwiftKey in 2009) and co-founded English Language iTutoring Ltd in 2013, serving as its chief scientist until 2019.

William Tunstall-Pedoe is a British entrepreneur working in AI and deep tech. He founded the voice-assistant company Evi (originally True Knowledge) in 2005, ran it as a VC-backed startup for seven years, and sold it to Amazon in 2012, where its technology and team helped create Alexa; he played a key role on the Alexa team before leaving Amazon in 2016. In 2019 he founded UnlikelyAI, a deep tech startup building safe and effective general AI, where he serves as CEO. He is an active angel investor who has personally backed around 100 AI startups, a full member of Cambridge Angels, and a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He also wrote the Anagram Genius software used by Dan Brown to create the anagrams in the Da Vinci Code and once drew press attention for calculating that April 11th 1954 was the most boring day in history.

Veteran of the pharmaceutical industry with over 20 years at Eli Lilly, including service as Chief Medical Officer from 2008 to 2021. He led development of therapeutics in women's health, endocrinology, and neuroscience through regulatory approval and global launch. Holds medical qualifications and fellowships in pharmaceutical medicine and obstetrics/gynaecology.