Meet the student VCs on the hunt for university innovation
UK universities are at the forefront of innovation. Oxford scientists are leading the way on a Covid vaccine. Inventions from fibre optics to holograms to MRI all came from our university labs. And four of the country’s current unicorns started life on campus, with Gymshark becoming the latest this summer.
That’s why we believe that UK universities are the best place to look for the generation of tech startups that will shape a world shaken by Covid. But these founders are hard to find. You need a team on-the-ground alongside them. That’s why every year we train exceptional Student Investors to back their peers at 25 universities across the country.
Innovation is happening across sectors, so we recruit diverse expertise to find it. We bring together PhDs in fields from genomics to the ethics of AI. And we have a diverse team, which this year is over 50% female. Our full team is 31 students, today we announce our new Senior Student Investors:
Adrian Signell, PhD in Virology and Genomics, Kings
Adrian has just completed a secondment at the Centre for Clinical Infection & Diagnostics Research at St Thomas’ Hospital where he helped develop and validate diagnostic testing for COVID 19. He has worked for and advises a number of Biotech startups, and holds a governance role at King’s College London.
Iain Mackie, PhD in Computing Science & Machine Learning, Glasgow
Iain used to be a quantitative trader at BNY Mellon, and left to launch his own successful e-commerce startup. He now studies Computing Science with his PhD focus on machine learning within information retrieval, and is active across the Scottish VC and startup ecosystem.
Bronwyn James, MBA, LBS
Bronwyn worked for private equity firm KKR in their Capital Markets team, and in investment banking with Morgan Stanley. She left to work in a series of operating and strategic finance roles in the sports sector for Equinox and Orange Theory.
Jenn Jia, PhD in Neuroscience, Cambridge
Jennifer is a Gates Cambridge Scholar and final year PhD student in Clinical Neurosciences at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. She is also Vice President of Cambridge University Entrepreneurs, the largest entrepreneurship competition at the university.
Joe Brown, PhD in Artificial Intelligence, Oxford
Joe is returning for a record breaking third year with Creator Fund. He is a PhD in Artificial Intelligence in Oxford, with a focusing on AI’s application to the energy industry.
Richa Bajpai, MBA, LBS
Richa is the founder of Goodera, a global technology platform for the CSR industry which has raised over $20 million. She has launched the Creator Fund model back in her native India, and is studying for an MBA at London Business School.
Ekaterina Shatalina, PhD Clinical Science, Imperial
Kat works at the Imperial MedTech SuperConnector incubator, and previously worked as a clinical researcher at the startup Affect.AI. She offers technical expertise to investors within neurotech, medtech and the pharmaceutical space. Her doctoral research is focused on applying novel ways of imaging the brain.
Marc Moesser, PhD Machine Learning, Oxford
Marc is the president and founder of the Oxford Venture Capital society, and a second year Creator Fund investor. He is in the penultimate year of his PhD in Machine Learning, and specialises in how ML can be applied to drug discovery. He previously management consultant at EY-Parthenon in Munich where he focused on the Life-science sector.
Akhila Denduluri, PhD Chemistry, Cambridge
Akhila is a Gates scholar investigating electrical interactions within living systems at a cellular level. She has extensive experience in health tech and working with academic teams to commercialise research. She has built a talent platform to connect student entrepreneurs across the UK.
Adriana Vitagliano, MBA, Oxford
Adriana previously worked on M&A deals at Deloitte. She is a Forté Foundation fellow at Saïd Business School and co-founded Start@Oxford, an initiative focused on enabling entrepreneurial thinking throughout Oxford. She previously worked in growth strategy for an AI scale up in Oxford.
Alessandro Masante, LSE
Alessandro is the President of the LSE Venture Capital society, and deeply embedded in the startup scene on campus. He has interned at Barclays Investment Bank in the Equity Capital Markets division as well as at a boutique financial advisory firm, Kon Group.
Kate Arzhevikina, UCL
Kate is Director of the UCL Venture Capital Fund. She worked at Plug and Play Ventures, focusing on startups across verticals including FinTech, Health Tech and Smart Tech. She also has experience working in FinTech at Goldman Sachs and was the winner of the Financial Times Talent Challenge 2020.
Our full team is made up of 31 Student Investors and Analysts across 25 UK universities. Meet the full team here: https://www.thecreatorfund.com/investors/
