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 Thursday 20 March 2025, hosted by the Commercialisation 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 Angela de Manzanos Guinot (CEO FA Bio Ltd.), Maria Leiloglou (CEO EnAcuity Ltd.), Alex Bond (CEO FreshCheck Ltd.), Ruben Doyle (Director Impact Surgical Ltd.) and, Toby Basey-Fisher (CEO Entia Ltd.).
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 The Journey from Academia to Startup: Forming and Joining Your Own Spinout.
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
Maria Leiloglou is the CEO and co-founder of EnAcuity: a joint spin-out from Imperial and UCL empowering surgeons to perform safer laparoscopies. Maria is a MedTech innovator with expertise in developing and clinically translating imaging technology.
During her PhD and MSc at Imperial College London, she brought three surgical imaging devices to first-in-human trials. With EnAcuity, her vision is to empower surgeons to enhance patient care with the world’s first AI-driven hyperspectral imaging solution.
Alex is one of the co-founders, and the CEO of FreshCheck. He studied for a PhD in Chemical Biology at Imperial College London before founding FreshCheck.
He has launched multiple products, and secured deals with blue-chip customers whilst juggling the demands of shareholder interests and ongoing R&D projects.
Angela, CEO of FA Bio, leads the company’s scientific direction, business strategy, and innovation pipeline. With 19 years in agriculture and sustainability, she brings expertise in leadership, biotechnology, and regenerative agriculture.
She holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s from Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, a Master’s in Chemical Biology of Crop Protection, and a PhD in Chemical Biology from Imperial College London, where she received multiple prizes for her academic performance and achievements.
Committed to leadership development, Angela has completed executive training at IESE, MIT Sloan, and INSEAD. A Royal Academy of Engineering Entrepreneur and Shott Scale Up Accelerator awardee, she champions biotechnology for sustainable farming and advocates for women in entrepreneurship.
Ruben completed a biomechanical PhD at Imperial College in 2019, before spinning-out at Additive Instruments. Based on the work of his PhD, Additive developed an automated impactor that is used to seat hip and knee implants in bone. This reduces the stress on surgeons and patients usually caused by using a hammer. Over a period of 4 years he and his co-founders grew to team to 7 full time employees via bootstrapping and grant funding. The company was sold to one of the ‘Big 4’ orthopaedic manufacturers in 2023.
He is now shareholder/advisor in 3 further startups and has co-founded London Devices – a medtech hardware startup – that recently raised its £1.1m seed round and has been awarded an Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst grant.
Toby is the founder and CEO of Entia, an oncology services company enabling more proactive, personalised and patient-centric cancer treatment through at-home blood monitoring. Entia successfully launched the world’s first blood count analyser for patient self-testing and is responsible for creating a wealth of new care pathways redefining cancer treatment in partnership with Pfizer, Lloyds Clinical, the NHS and many others.
Toby received his PhD in Biomedical Physics from Imperial College London where he holds an honorary lectureship. He has served as a board member at the British IVD Association (BIVDA) and is a Blavatnik Enterprise Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Under his leadership, Entia has evolved from a university spin-out into an established market leader in blood monitoring.