Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top London based Chairman operating in the Biotechnology space. If you think a Chairman is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
David Dutton
Exec Chairman of Bio-Sep
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About Bio-Sep, PrimeLocation.com: Biorefinery technology to separate non-food waste lignocellulosic biomass into high-value biochemicals
George Goldsmith
Executive Chairman, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of COMPASS Pathways
George is a serial entrepreneur with significant experience in pharmaceutical regulation. George’s early training and experience was a multi-disciplinary blending of cognitive psychology, clinical psychology and computer science.His first company, The Human Interface Group, was a pioneer in collaborative software and acquired by Lotus Development. George led the Lotus Institute and developed software and services to support high-performance, distributed teamwork. George then created TomorrowLab, which provided strategic guidance to internet businesses in the late 1990s. At the same time, he became a senior advisor to McKinsey & Company’s leadership, and eventually joined McKinsey as CEO of TomorrowLab@McKinsey. Subsequently, as a member of the Young Presidents Organisation (YPO) and its International Board of Directors, George founded YPO Networks. In 2002, George founded Tapestry Networks, an organisation committed to improving leadership performance and governance effectiveness in regulated sectors. He still serves as Tapestry Networks’ Non-Executive Chairman. George also serves on the board of directors for AnaBios, a company redefining drug discovery. He and his wife, Ekaterina Malievskaia MD, live in London.
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About COMPASS Pathways: Compass Pathways is a mental health care company dedicated to accelerating patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health.
Douglas Dundonald
Chairman of Tharos
Douglas is a founder and director of UK-based technology commercialisation group Scientific Venture Partners Ltd which has built a portfolio of high potential technology-based companies arising from leading research institutions. He has been involved in technology companies both as an investor and director for the last 20 years. He is also a former executive main board member of Anglo Pacific Group plc. When an active member of the House of Lords, he held a position on the council of the Parliamentary Information Technology Committee. He is the honorary consul for Chile in Scotland.
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About Scientific Venture Partners: Improving equine health and performance through optimised digestion
Mungo Park
Chairman of Innovator Capital Ltd
Mungo Park, Chairman of Innovator Capital, has been an investment banker, on both sides of the Atlantic, for 30 years focussing exclusively on emerging technologies. He was previously at Cowen & Co., Alex. Brown and Head of Corporate Finance at Nomura International.
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About : London based specialist investment bank advising sustainable, resource efficiency, ICT and life science companies from around the world
Quentin Pankhurst
Chairman of MediSieve
Quentin is a world expert in magnetic nanoparticles, and an academic innovator with direct experience in the medical technology sector. In 2007, he founded Endomagnetics to commercialise a device for sentinel node detection in breast cancer, serving the company as CEO until 2010 and as a board member until 2014. He played a key role in CE marking the device, which has treated more than 3,500 patients in 15 countries. A physicist by training, Quentin is the Director of the Healthcare Biomagnetics Laboratory at UCL, where he runs programmes in bio- and nanomagnetism aimed at making practicle advances in the use of magnetic nanoparticles in healthcare. He is a champion of translational R&D, for which he established the UCL Institute of Biomedical Engineering. The objective of the IBME is to bring together UCL’s excellence in academic and clinical R&D – around a thousand staff, fellows, nurses and students in 35 different centres, departments and institutes – to create the world’s best research centre for biomedical engineering.
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About Endomag, University College London (UCL): MediSieve is a therapeutics company developing a platform technology for the treatment of blood-borne diseases.
Colin Bennett
Non Executive Chairman of EnteroBiotix
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About EnteroBiotix, University of Oxford: EnteroBiotix is a developer of novel medicinal products intended to restore health and prevent bacterial infections.
Sam Williams
Executive Chairman of Istesso
Sam is the founding CEO of Istesso and currently serves as Executive Chairman. He has been with the company since 2007, prior to which he was a top-ranked equity analyst in the City of London. Sam is Chairman of Microbiotica Ltd and Iksuda Ltd, and a non-executive Director of Diurnal Group plc. He holds a PhD in molecular biology from Cambridge and a degree in biology from Oxford.
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About IP Group, Istesso: Istesso is a drug discovery and development company working in the field of immunometabolism.
Ken Powell
Executive Chairman of the Board of ReViral
Prior to his current role, Ken had very extensive experience of the Biotechnology sector. In reverse order he was: Executive Chairman of Q-Chip a Cardiff, Wales based life science company developing novel delayed release formulations of drugs (merged with Midatech and the joint company listed on AIM in 2015). Founder and CEO of Arrow Therapeutics Ltd (a specialised antiviral drug discovery company acquired by Astra-Zeneca PLC for $150 million in February 2007). Professor at UCL and Deputy Director of the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research where he had responsibility for commercial activity including setting up five biotechnology start-up companies. He was a senior Pharmaceutical executive with the Wellcome Foundation which he decided to leave at the Wellcome/Glaxo merger. He has had a successful academic career in the UK and USA. He is an expert virologist and has been involved in the development of multiple drugs including anti-viral compounds against herpes viruses, HIV, Hepatitis C and RSV.
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About ReViral: ReViral is a biotechnology company that develops and offers antiviral therapies for patients.
Robert Thong
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Multiomic Health
Robert has made the art of consulting his life’s work. As Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Unleash, he applies a wealth of experience to his personal mission: creating world-beating organisations. A supportive advisor to senior executives, Robert combines experienced know-how with an open mindset, delivering results that keep his clients coming back for more. Moving to the UK from Malaysia as a super-smart, teenage maths whiz, Robert started his career as an actuary. Finding business more interesting than statistical models, it wasn’t long before he decided to pursue the MBA that would introduce him to the world of management consulting. Initially focusing on analytical strategy development and operations improvement across various industries, Robert was soon drawn towards managing strategic change in R&D-driven organisations. Robert’s deep understanding of the inner workings of the pharmaceutical industry combined with his appreciation of a senior executive’s daily pressures, is a rare find indeed. He has not only been the pharmaceutical practice head in major consultancies, held P&L accountability and board positions, Robert has also spent much of his time on the ground understanding the real-life issues facing clients in laboratories, factories, pharmacies and physician offices. Coming from an analytical background himself, Robert had to learn in practice about the importance of managing change and engaging people to ensure lasting results, and was inspired to help clients do the same. Robert is dedicated to his clients winning long-term. After founding a boutique consultancy focused on the management practices of small-to-mid sized outfits competing with Big Pharmas, he decided to follow his true calling: guiding leaders and organisations of all types and sizes to success through people-driven strategy execution.
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About Multiomic Health, Selvedge Venture: Multiomic Health is building a precision therapeutics discovery platform for metabolic syndrome diseases
Eliot Charles
Executive Chairman of MiroBio
Eliot Charles is the Executive Chairman of MiroBio. He also serves as a mentor at Creative Destruction Labs.
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About Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), MiroBio: MiroBio is Harnessing the natural control mechanisms of the immune system.
