Board

Dr Andy Richards (Chairman)

Dr Andy Richards is a serial entrepreneur and business angel. He has invested in more than 25 private companies and has played an active role in many of these. He is currently Chairman of Altacor, IXICO and Novacta and is a director of Vectura plc, Summit plc, Theradeas, Cancer Research Technology (commercial arm of CR-UK) and Babraham Bioscience Technology.

Andy is a Cambridge University natural sciences graduate and has a PhD in Protein Chemistry. He spent his early career in research with ICI (now AstraZeneca) and consulting with PA Technology. He was a founder of Chiroscience in 1992 and an executive director through to the sale to Celltech in 1999. Since that time he has been founding and investing in new lifescience companies including several of those listed above as well as Arakis, Geneservice, Cambridge Biotechnology Ltd, Amedis Pharmaceuticals, Sirus Pharmaceuticals Daniolabs and Pharmakodex, all of which were recently sold. He is a member of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), a founder member of the Cambridge Angels, the founding Chairman of BIA Bioangels and an advisor to Toscana Life Sciences. He also advises a number of leading venture capital and private equity funds.

Prof. Derek Hill (Founder and CEO)
Derek Hill is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of IXICO. Under his leadership, IXICO has developed from a start-up company into a major supplier of imaging solutions to the global pharmaceutical industry and academic institutions, collecting medical imaging data from many hundreds of sites around the globe. Derek also holds an academic appointment as Full Professor at University College London. He took a BSc degree in Physics at Imperial College, an MSc in Medical Physics at University of Surrey, a PhD in medical image analysis at the Medical School of Guy's & St Thomas' Hospitals, University of London, and business training at the London Business School. He was appointed a lecturer (assistant professor) in 1995. He was appointed full professor in September 2004, shortly before co-founding IXICO. He has been working on medical imaging science for over 20 years, and has authored more than 80 journal papers in this field. His research track record has been focused on image acquisition and analysis in MRI and PET. He has worked on applications in the study of dementia, heart disease, arthritis, oncology and guiding interventions.  He is a member of the MRI Core of the ADNI project, has served on the scientific advisory board for several pharmaceutical companies, and is involved in the Critical Path institute CAMD biomarker qualification initiatives. 

Prof. Jo Hajnal (Founder)
Jo Hajnal is Head of the Imaging Physics and Engineering Group, Head of the Robert Steiner MR Unit and of the Imaging Sciences Department at the Hammersmith Hospital Campus of Imperial College, as well as Chairman of the In Vivo Imaging Section of the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, a UK national research institute dedicated to integrating basic with Clinical Science. He trained as a physicist at Bristol University, England, UK and obtained a PhD in the physics of electromagnetic waves before working in Australia at Melbourne University and the ANU on interactions between atomic beams and laser light. In 1990 he began research in medical imaging with a special interest in MRI. His current research interests include MR data acquisition and processing, image registration and data fusion as well as novel scanner technology, parallel imaging and motion artefact correction. He has invented and pioneered techniques that are now widely used in the medical imaging industry, published over a hundred papers in peer reviewed journals and is currently holder of nine grants from a variety of funding organisations. He is a member of the board of the international Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

Peter Hudson Ellis, C.H.E., A.H.A. (Non-Executive Director)
Mr Ellis is currently Executive Director of People in Health. Prior to joining People in Health he was head of Arthur D Little's health industry practice and prior to that, a senior partner in Ernst & Young's Global Consulting life sciences practice. Mr Ellis has over 30 years of experience in managing and consulting in the health industry in the UK, North America and Europe. Before his return to the UK in 1996 he was the President and Chief Executive Officer of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Corporation in Toronto. Mr Ellis' specific areas of expertise and interest include: health system policy, strategic alliance development; research and development strategies; mergers and acquisitions; integrated delivery systems; growth and innovation strategies; customer and market strategies; management information systems. Mr Ellis has also taken an active interest in international health policy issues and has, either as a government appointee or industry representative, led or been a member of many commissions or task forces charged with improving healthcare systems. Mr Ellis has led assignments in large multi-national pharmaceutical companies, emerging biotech companies, medical device organizations, large academic health sciences centres, governments and provider organizations across the health industry. Mr. Ellis is also chairman of VisionRT, a company that is in the process of bringing to market a novel radiotherapy patient positioning system that will improve the accuracy and effectiveness of radiation treatment. Mr Ellis is an Honorary Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Health Management Division, University of Toronto.

Sir Colin Dollery (Non-Executive Director)
Sir Colin Dollery has been a senior consultant to Research and Development in GlaxoSmithKline, and before that in SmithKline Beecham, for 9 years. He is particularly concerned with the discovery-development interface when new drugs transfer from the laboratory to early studies in man. In GlaxoSmithKline he is an adviser to Dr Yamada the Chairman of Research and Development and he serves on the committees that review all protocols for human research, on the Development Investment Board and on the Global Safety Board that reviews all issues related to safety including approval for first administration of a new drug to man. Prior to joining GSK and SB Sir Colin spent his academic career at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School of the University of London at Hammersmith Hospital in West London.

Helen Reynolds (Non-Executive Director)
Helen Reynolds is an Investment Manager at YFM Venture Finance. The YFM Group is a major provider of finance to the UK SME sector. Its largest fund under management is The Capital Fund, a £46m fund for high growth London-based businesses that first invested in IXICO in 2006. Helen has a BA in Natural Sciences and an MSci in Physics from the University of Cambridge. She began her career at ZS Associates, a management consultancy firm focussed on the pharmaceutical sector, then moved to Seed Capital, working on the Oxford Technology Venture Capital Trusts. She joined YFM in October 2003 and has responsibility for a number of The Capital Fund’s investments, many of which are in healthcare, technology and life sciences.