Meet Our Team
Leadership
Ali Afshar
CEO | Co-Founder
First designed lab robots during PhD, and previously started a hardware company. Sits at intersection of science, engineering, and business. YCombinator alumnus, and Forbes 30 Under 30.
Ignacio Willats
Co-Founder
Enterprise sales and product experience at multiple startups. Fosters a deep focus on the customer within the team, and leads sales. YCombinator alumnus, and Forbes 30 Under 30.
Justin Chan
Head of Engineering
Multidisciplinary hardware engineer, experienced in new product development. Former "New Categories" R&D engineer at Dyson, and robotic kitchens at Deliveroo.
Francesca Cartier
Head of Operations
Responsible for business operations and customer delivery. Experienced in building and scaling teams. Former Head of Ops at Bulb. Ex McKinsey consultant.
Hardware
James Cunningham
Engineering Manager, Hardware
Hardware engineer with extensive early development and manufacture experience. Has overseen products from early prototypes, all the way through to manufacture in China.
Rob Melling
Mechanical Engineer
Multi-disciplinary mechanical engineer with experience interning on automated cell culture machines and multiple years of rapid prototyping and design for manufacture.
Sam O'Mahony
Senior Electronics Engineer
Multidisciplinary electronics engineer across firmware and PCBs. Led R&D of next-gen smart EV chargers, working across electronics, firmware & higher level software.
Paul Rademeyer
Senior Mechanical Engineer
Mechanical engineer with 10 years of experience developing scientific instrumentation. PhD in biomedical engineering, previous hardware lead in cryogenics and atomic microscopy products.
Felix Russell
Senior Mechanical Engineer
Research and robotics engineer with 6 years experience in automation across the fields of biomechanics, batteries and now biology. Created a world-leading mechanical knee model during PhD.
Flynn Marshall
Mechanical Engineer
Mechanical engineering graduate whose specialisations include robotics, control systems and computer simulation.
Aaron Teo
Engineer
Ex-Dyson patent holder. Experience across hardware development, complex modelling, and statistical testing to take products from development to reliable manufacture.
Chris Clark
Engineering Technician
Coming originally from a craft background, experienced in work with non-ferrous metals and possessing a wide and varied skill set in several wide and diverse fields.
Jarrod Greenwood
Engineering Technician
Biomedical Engineering graduate focused on medical devices and bone scaffold design. 4 years experience as a machinist, with proficiency in CNC and manual techniques.
James Ward
Junior Electronics Engineer
Multidisciplinary Electronic Engineering graduate with background in drones, 3D printing and real-time signal analysis. Previous co-founder of a hardware company.
Václav Zdražil
Senior Engineering Technician
Mechanical engineer with more than 10 years experience in electro-mechanical assembly and production optimisation. Leading 1 international and 2 national production transition.
Software
Ben Greenberg
Lead
Multidisciplinary designer & engineer, spanning from hardware to software to user experience design. Experience at Dyson.
Henry Miskin
Staff Software Engineer
Full-stack software engineer, spanning from firmware all the way to cloud. 5 years experience as early engineer at multiple startups. Also qualified as a mechanical engineer.
Benedict Carling
Software Engineer
Experienced Full Stack Engineer proficient in Typescript and Python, with a background at IBM and startups.
Ben Wilson
Software Engineer
Software/bio-engineer, specialising in working across disciplines on complex systems. Experience in computer vision and statistical methods.
Tom Kaplan
Software Engineer
Research software engineer with experience in companies applying AI in high-performance systems. Developing new probabilistic machine learning algorithms during PhD.
Oskar Williams
Senior Software Engineer
Full-stack software engineer with time spent as Tech Lead, SRE, and Lead DevOps. 4 years experience in software consultancy with focus on infrastructure, architecture, and security.
Biology
Dr Stephen Weston
Senior Stem Cell Scientist
Experience developing and implementing novel iPSC differentiation protocols during PhD.
Jordina Casanova Vilar
Scientist
Multiple years experience in molecular biology techniques and working with multiple mammalian cell types. Experience conducting R&D that crosses engineering and biology.
Dr Joana Costa
Bioengineer
Experienced developing at the interface of biology and engineering. Modified low-level 3D printer code for printing cell-based structures.
Sigita Malijauskaite
Bioengineer
A Ph.D. R&D scientist specialising in mammalian cell culture, iPSCs, iPSC differentiation, organoids and high-content fluorescent microscopy assays. 7 peer-reviewed journal publications and a book chapter stemming from doctoral research.
Aisha Memon
Associate Stem Cell Scientist
Associate scientist specialising in stem cell culture with particular experience in tissue engineering.
Rebecca Powell
Scientist
Multiple years experience working with stem cells in biotech and academia. Specialised in stem cell differentiation and tissue engineering during PhD.
Product & Sales
Dr Xian Weng
Lead Product Applications Manager
Highly-innovative scientist skilled in combining biology and chemistry with engineering to solve hard challenges. Former Principal Scientist developing on-chip blood diagnostics at Orphidia, and GMP experience at Lonza.
Jake Isaacs
US Account Executive
Former scientist in immunology, biophysics, structural biology, molecular diagnostics, and various other fields. Previously in technical sales roles at Sartorius, Solentim, and Advanced Instruments.
Jonathon Paikoff
US Account Executive
Spent seven years in tech sales roles of increasing responsibility before pursuing drug development research. Ready to help your team automate cell culture.
Advisors
Jared Friedman
Partner, Y-Combinator
Founding CTO of Scribd, now a $100m/yr business. As a partner at Y-Combinator, Jared has coached hundreds of highly-succcesful startups, including many in biotech. An expert on all aspects of running and scaling a company.
Ian Felix
Manufacturing Advisor
Over 40 years experience in successfully bringing products from prototype through manufacture as a leader, including Apple, IBM, and 7 medical devices at different startups. Currently COO at Lassen Peak.
Ahmed Badr
Legal Advisor
Ahmed is COO at GoCardless. He joined GoCardless in 2015 and helped take them from Series B to G, from 40 to 1,000 people and to over $100m revenue. A lawyer by trade, and tech geek by nature.
Ben Haley
Drug Discovery Advisor
20 years of experience focused on technology development for scalable biological discovery and gene, cell, and nucleic acid therapies. Previously a Distinguished Scientist at Genentech, Ben is currently a Full Professor at the Université de Montréal.
Brian O'Sullivan
Sales Advisor
Known as a sales sniper, Brian has built commercial organisations within life science tech start ups and multinational organisations with revenue generation at top of mind. Passion for the digital transformation in the life science market and harnessing data to drive discovery via automation data factories.
Paddy Lambros
People Advisor
Paddy is an expert in People and Recruiting. He built the team at Improbable as a Talent Acquisition Lead from 65 people to 650 people, and then went on to lead Sensat as Head of People and Talent from 20 before Series A, to over 90 post Series B.
Charlie O'Driscoll
People Advisor
Charlie is the Head of Tech Recruitment at Monzo bank. He joined Monzo in 2021 and has helped the tech org double in size. Before Monzo Charlie worked at Deliveroo during their IPO and has previously led hiring teams at Improbable, the BBC and others.