Impulse meets EPOC
Get ready for an exciting journey – From inventor to innovator

Are you ready for the next step to make your innovative idea/project a reality?

Impulse, the Cambridge entrepreneurship programme for tech innovators based at the Maxwell Centre, helps you to transform your innovative research idea/ project into a “high potential” business case. More than 80 top-tier entrepreneurs, innovators, investors and industry experts share their expertise, offer senior level mentoring and guidance. The programme provides a unique learning environment for participants helping them to transform scientific breakthroughs into market-ready solutions.

Accept the challenge and join our event to learn more about Impulse and sponsorship opportunities, get inspired by one of our mentors and listen how other Postdocs experienced the Impulse programme.

Agenda

6:00 – 6:15     Registration

6:15 – 6:30     Impulse – The Cambridge entrepreneurship programme for tech innovators
                        Yupar Myint, Head of Impulse
6:30 – 7:10     Accept the challenge – Become an innovator
                        Fiona Nielsen, Repositive

7:10 – 7:30     The innovator's journey - Insights and learnings from Impulse alumni
                        Chris Proctor, Cambridge Bioelectronics
                        Gita Khalili Moghaddam, GlycoVue 

7:30 – 8:30     Networking session (nibbles and drinks)

Short bios:

Yupar Myint, Head of Impulse
Yupar has more than 16 years of experiences in building up entrepreneurship programmes and international collaborations. She has been involved in developing the IECT Hermann Hauser Summer School in Austria and serves as a programme director and mentor since 2015. Yupar worked previously at CfEL, Judge Business School where she led Ignite for over 11 years and during her leadership Ignite has generated over 250 business ventures; more than £200 million in funding was raised and approximately 4,300 jobs were created by the alumni ventures. Previously 2008-2013, she served as a programme director at EFER in the Netherlands that trains European professors to teach entrepreneurship. Yupar completed her MBA at Cambridge Judge Business School in 2002 and her research interest includes understanding the social capital effect in entrepreneurial development and trainings.

Fiona Nielsen, Impulse mentor

Fiona, founder of DNAdigest and Repositive, is a bioinformatics scientist turned entrepreneur. At Illumina she was developing tools for interpretation of next-generation sequencing data and analysing cancer and FFPE samples sequenced on the latest technology. There she realised how difficult it is to find and get access to genomics data for research, which led to DNAdigest being founded as a charity to promote best practices for efficient and ethical data sharing - aligning the interests of patients and researchers. In August 2014 Repositive Ltd was spun out of DNAdigest as a commercial entity to develop and provide a novel software tools and mechanisms for sharing of data. Repositive has since grown to the biggest portal for accessing public genomic data sources, contributing expertise and genomic search functionality to the NIH Data Commons. Fiona was nominated for the 2013 WiSE award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Gita Khalili Moghaddam, Impulse alumna

Gita is a 2019 Borysiewicz Biomedical Sciences Fellow at the University of Cambridge. She has a background in artificial intelligence and biomedical engineering and contributed towards the development of disruptive
technologies in clinical audiology and retinal implants. During her PhD in biotechnology, she developed a smart contact lens platform for monitoring glucose in tear fluids to manage diabetes. She is pursuing its commercialisation through a university spin-out, GlycoVue, a corporate member of the BIA. Gita received a Medtech Accelerator Award in 2018 and co-founded TumourVue; she is now developing a passive, real-time imaging device to assist cancer surgeons at CUH. Her entrepreneurial development has led to being a
finalist for the Techpreneurs Awards for Women 2019.

Chris Proctor, Impulse alumnus

Chris received a B.Sc. in Interdisciplinary Physics from the University of Michigan in 2008. Following two years as a general scientist at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he earned a Ph.D. in Materials from the University of California, Santa Barbara where he investigated loss mechanisms in organic photovoltaics (2015).

Subsequently, Chris was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from Whitaker International to develop implantable bioelectronic devices for treating neurological disorders at the Ecole des Mines de St Etienne. He is now continuing this work as a Borysiewicz Biomedical Sciences Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Starting in March 2020, Chris will be a group leader in the Engineering Department as a BBSRC David Phillips Fellow.

Chris, Vincenzo Curto and Damiano Barone founded the pre-start-up company Cambridge Bioelectronics. They have invented a novel spinal cord simulator that allows for a simple percutaneous surgical implantation of a paddle device with high-resolution stimulation for superior pain management. This innovation offers the benefits of simple surgery and effective pain management. 

For more information please visit our website or email us impulse@maxwell.cam.ac.uk

We are looking forward to welcoming you.