Team

Mark started his career with a PhD in Neuropharmacology and Artificial Intelligence working on better models for the development of epilepsy and neurodegeneration therapeutics, he then worked in cleantech venture before going on to build out Imperial College’s deep-tech start-up accelerator and academic spin-out ecosystem, facilitating several exits to the major tech companies before leaving to start DSV in 2016.

Dom previously led Imperial College London’s science startup programme: worked with over 200 student companies, and supported a fraction of these to raise over £25m in funding within 3 years. Grew community 375% to 3000 scientists in 1 year. Left Imperial in 2016 to co-found DSV, recognised as one of Forbes Finance Under 30 in 2021.

Santa led commercial development at an envirotech startup while completing her Masters Degree in Commerce, specialising in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She then joined world-leading deep-tech incubator Cicada Innovations, where she was in charge of admissions and a junior business mentor. She then co-developed and managed what has now become the most successful medtech commercialisation training program in Australia before joining DSV to lead creation of brand new founding teams and first hires.

Ahmad is a serial entrepreneur with 25 years in finance and deep tech, as a founder, investor, operator and mentor. Most recently, he founded, scaled and exited a multi-billion AUM quant hedge fund. Has been an advisor to Deep Science Ventures since 2017 and also an investor. He is founders circle at IFOW, mentor at CDL, Zinc and Transcend Networks. Ahmad is also an early stage investor in deep tech, AI and climate companies with 60+ investments.

Adam’s career has focused on applied science innovation and new business development, spanning both corporate innovation/R&D and venture-backed startups. He holds a PhD and MSci in Chemistry from the University of Oxford and Imperial College London, respectively. He worked in Johnson Matthey’s innovation team and strategic development groups focusing on energy storage and transmission, syngas technologies, alternative fuels, CCU/CCS, carbon dioxide conversion and hydrogen generation. Following this, he led commercial efforts as Chief Commercial Officer at venture-backed start-up LabGenius (machine learning-enabled biotech) where he focused on business development and commercial strategy to secure corporate partnerships and VC.

Kerstin started her PhD at German Cancer Research Centre and then moved to a lab at Imperial College to work on novel treatment options within the field of tumour immunology. She since has spent almost ten years in leadership roles at impact-driven organisations advancing medicine and therapeutics, while also securing an executive MBA and a women in business award. Before joining DSV to develop science companies designing more effective personalised therapies, Kerstin was transforming ideas for cutting edge cell and gene therapies into investable propositions at UK’s Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult.

Ashraf has been an executive leader in the semiconductor industry for 40+ years. Most recently he was Vice President - Data Center Power, Intel Corp. Prior to that he founded power semiconductor startup Enpirion from zero to 500+ customers, leading its acquisition by Intel/Altera and realizing large shareholder returns. Before that he was Director, analog and power management semiconductor research at AT&T Bell Laboratories. He leads the Compute segment at DSV forming new ventures emphasizing significant power-performance improvements for leading-edge applications. He is independent board member at CVD Equipment Corp. (NASDAQ:CVV) and Lotus Microsystems. He holds an executive MBA and PhD-EE and is Fellow of the IEEE.

Prior to DSV, Noah founded LIC, an award-winning beverage company, and developed patented packaging, a vertically-integrated supply chain and co-brands with major alcohol brands such as Bombay Sapphire and Malibu. He raised over £1.5m in investment and launched LIC into retailers across Europe and the USA. Noah holds a Masters in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London and is currently Consumer Expert-in-Residence there.

Prior to joining DSV, Laura was Associate Director of Cancer Research UK’s Commercial Partnerships team, heading the Strategic Alliances function which drives the charity’s strategic drug discovery and platform relationships with a range of commercial partners. Her other experience at CRUK and Cancer Research Technology over 14 years included transacting a wide range of significant license, collaboration and spin out deals. She holds a 1st class degree in Biochemistry and a PhD in cell signalling from the University of Bristol and has additionally worked in academic and commercial research roles in the US and the UK.

Anís began his career in the biopharma industry, pursuing immunology & fibrosis research at UCB, cancer epigenetics research at Boehringer Ingelheim, and GMP Quality Assurance at Lonza Biologics. He was later a Clarendon Scholar at the University of Oxford, where his PhD explored the immune microenvironment in breast cancer using single-cell genomics. He also holds an MSc in Immunology from the University of Oxford, a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Manchester, and has co-authored research articles published in high-impact journals including Nature Genetics. At DSV, Anís helps build companies developing curative therapeutics across a range of disease areas.

After her BSc and MSc at ETH in Zurich Pina started her career with building an electrochemical separation process for protein purification during a PhD program at Wageningen University and Nanyang Technological University. Afterwards, she worked with different start-ups, accelerators and VCs focusing on novel technologies in the energy and food tech space. This included a project with StartLife, a leading agrifoodtech accelerator, and Octopus Ventures. At DSV Pina is scoping business opportunities that help to move the needle on the climate crisis e.g. negative emissions technologies and carbon neutral fuels.

Aaron is a graduate of Harvard University where he received a masters degree focused on design for learning. He has spent the last decade working as a lead designer for companies that are building science and entrepreneurship learning communities...ranging from NYC's Quest to Learn—the world's first game-based learning school, ALU—a startup that's scaling a network of modern universities across Africa, and most recently for On Deck—a San Francisco based startup accelerator that has helped founders learn how to start 1,000+ companies and raise over $2 billion from investors.

Thane holds an MSc in Healthcare Innovation and Entrepreneurship and a PhD in immunology where he combined enzyme kinetics, fluorescent biomarkers and a neural network API to predict immune responses, in collaboration with GSK. Within Innovation Forum his work to help PhD students commercialise their research received a knowledge transfer award, and in his first year working at Edinburgh Innovations he championed their partnership with DSV to launch Scotland’s first venture builder. At DSV Thane designs a doctoral training programme where graduates forecast their industry’s next iteration, conduct the necessary scientific research and commercialise it. Science companies created during the Venture Science Doctorate will meet societal needs in AI and complex legacy sectors like healthcare, energy and agriculture.

Francesco began his career as a full-stack engineer before transitioning to a healthcare startup, where he joined the natural language processing team. During his time there, he focused on tasks such as information extraction, anonymisation, and named entity recognition. He then moved into research, developing language models to generate medical notes from consultation transcripts. He completed a PhD on evaluating the quality of medical note generation before joining DSV as Head of ML Engineering.

Moustafa holds a PhD in Stem Cells and Genetic Engineering, his MDUK-funded doctoral studies focused on developing a disease modelling platform for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) at UCL and the Francis Crick Institute. He also holds a MRes in Biosciences from UCL, and a BSc in Cell and Developmental Biology with a Minor in Chemistry from the American University in Cairo (AUC). He has co-authored research articles published in high-impact journals throughout his academic career. Prior to joining DSV, Moustafa worked on sourcing gene therapy assets at RTW Investments. At DSV, he works on developing AI and LLM systems for knowledge across our sectors, and within the Pharma team on scoping opportunity areas and venture creation.

Lukas is a mechanical engineer by training with a background in energy systems. He previously worked at the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions at Heriot-Watt University, where he explored obstacles and required actions to scale direct air capture of CO2, as well as technologies to decarbonise the UK industries - with a focus on steel and cement manufacturing. In prior roles, Lukas worked on technological transition pathways to decarbonise the transport sector, a topic he researched during his PhD at ETH Zurich. At DSV, Lukas scopes for technical solutions and assists new founders with the venture creation process to reverse global warming.

Jonathan specialises in molecular medicine and has a particular interest in genetic engineering and epigenetics. He studied molecular genetics and pharmacology at King’s College London (BSc) before starting his PhD at the University of Cambridge. At Cambridge, Jonathan’s MRC- funded research addressed intra-cellular immune responses to foreign genetic material and formed the basis of gene therapy-enhancing technology.

After completing an MEng in Materials Science at the University of Oxford, Harry worked on R&D projects across precious metal products manufacturing, critical materials recycling, and CO2 utilisation at Johnson Matthey. He then joined DSV as a Founder in Residence, spinning out Yama to scale direct air capture of CO2. At DSV Harry continues to support Yama, and is scoping new technological solutions to critical minerals and water scarcity, as well as toxic chemical pollution.

Will holds a BSc in Biology from the University of Sheffield and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, where he studied the molecular basis of plant-microbe interactions. Since then, he has worked on the Gates Foundation funded ENSA project (Enabling Nitrogen Symbiosis for Africa) and at the International Livestock Research Institute to assess a climate-smart feedstock for dairy farmers. Before joining DSV, he was Head of Funding Delivery for Strategic Programmes at UKRI-BBSRC, working with stakeholders across academia, government and business to design investment programmes that advance biological knowledge and address global issues.

Abi joined DSV from a senior leadership position at waste-plastic-to-chemicals company, Itero, where she led commercial activities, policy advocacy, and product development. Over seven years, she played a pivotal role in securing over €11 million in both equity at Series A and non-dilutive funding, forged strategic partnerships with global petrochemical companies and industry bodies, and gained both pilot and FOAK development experience. Abi holds an Chemistry MSci and PhD in quantum modelling of ethylene-propylene co-polymerisation mechanisms from University College London, sponsored by petrochemical companies DSM and ARLANXEO.

As part of the DSV Education team, Claire is developing a new flavour of PhD, a PhD in invention: the Venture Science Doctorate. She also currently holds a role as Co-CEO of tech inspiration charity Tech She Can - working to increase the number of women in tech roles. Claire is a woman in tech, a returner, a physicist and a mum, her background is in innovation and commercialisation in research-intensive environments, including leading multi-£million acquisitions, such as iKinema by Apple; developed the vision and strategy for Imperial College London’s White City £3bn 23-acre innovation district; and operated the #1 global university business incubator. Claire completed a Masters in Physics at Warwick and a PhD in Experimental Astroparticle Physics from Imperial.

Shauna began her career in New York City, recruiting quantitative analysts and software developers at D. E. Shaw and coordinating production teams at TED Talks. Her passion for the interplay between science and society led her to an MA in Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna. She later joined the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, where she focused on deliberative democracy in climate policy, research evaluation and monitoring, and policies for enhancing the societal impact of research investments. Her role at DSV is to support the Venture Science Doctorate program, a natural extension of her mission to design innovative institutional models that unlock the full potential of scientific talent.