Following on from the successful launch of The University of Bath first Enterprise Day in the spring. We are running as part of Global Entrepreneurship week a panel discussion on My Entrepreneurial Journey the panel will be led by Stephen Rangecroft and the speakers include:

- Jinghui (Helen) Liang, Founder & Chief Scientific Officer, Labcycle

- Mark Farmer, Angel Investor, E

- Vimal Dhokia, Founder and former Director of Gen3D

- James Russ, Founder Testmyteeth

- Natasha BirkBeauty Switch

The evening will take place in the Chancellors Building on campus and is designed to bring together our existing enterprise community including students, researchers, entrepreneurs and representatives from larger organisations. Our alumni are also invited, many of whom are now launching or running their own enterprises.

There will be a wide range of personal insights and experiences shared by those who have turned their innovative ideas into real business propositions.

More on University of Bath Enterprise.

Speaker Bio's

Jinghui (Helen) is CSO at LabCycle, with a background in microbiology, biotechnology and sustainable chemical technologies. As a scientist, she has witnessed the problem of laboratory plastic waste in the research and healthcare sectors across different continents. Determined to solve this, she co-founded LabCycle alongside her PhD as a Marie Curie FIRE Fellow in the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies (CSCT) at the University of Bath. Furthermore, she has been recognised as the University of Bath Alumni Innovation Award 2020 winner, and a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow.

Mark is former co-founder of Eden Ventures which was established in 2002 and ceased operations in June 2020, where he served as an Investment Manager. He primarily focused on opportunities within enterprise software, stating that what he most enjoyed about working for Eden was meeting entrepreneurs. He was responsible for Eden's investment in Apertio, which was acquired by Nokia Siemens Networks for $240 million. Mark is also an angel investor in several companies: Creo Medical, Invenias, Hybrid Cluster and 1791 Diamonds. Before joining Eden, Mark gained considerable management experience through co-founding several telecoms companies, most recently Cramer Systems, which emerged as the leading supplier of inventory systems to the telecoms industry and was acquired by Amdocs in 2006 for $425 million.

Vimal is the joint Deputy Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Knowledge Exchange Director for the Faculty of Design and Reader in Digital Manufacturing where his research focuses on bridging the gap between design and manufacture. His research has included work in advanced prosthetics, additive manufacture and composite manufacture. More recently he has been working on a major EU project to redefine human-robot collaboration.

In 2013 he gave a 2-minute pitch to a research council that led to the beginning of the Gen3D story. Gen3D officially started-up in May 2018 and exactly 4 years later, in 2022, was acquired by a major US software company. To put this into some context. Within engineering grant funding success rates are approximately 15%. Acceptance rates for a Nature paper are about 7%. The chance of a seed stage company successfully existing is about 3%. Gen3D was pre-seed. Our chances of exiting were less than 1%.

James - James Russ is the founder of Testmyteeth, a dental technology start-up that provides AI powered oral hygiene insights to patients through their smartphone, between dental appointments. The vision for Testmyteeth was inspired by the difficulties James faced when accessing affordable dental care, whilst suffering from a painful and preventable infection around his wisdom tooth at university. During his studies, James placed as a semi-finalist in the National Telegraph STEM awards and his experience working in R&D at Dyson, gave him a real insight into the process of designing the latest innovative technology and delivering projects in a fast-paced environment. After graduating with an Integrated Masters in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bath in 2021, and with the help of an Innovation award, James has spent the last year working fulltime to transform his vision into a working mobile app, which will be launched in the next few months.

Natasha is the founder of the award-winning sustainable cosmetics business Laguna Lashes and Beauty Switch - a new platform that encourages consumers to switch to ethical beauty products. With strong passions for diversity, sustainability, and innovation, Natasha is using her experience working in the beauty industry with her international management background to cultivate positive change.

This year, Natasha was awarded an Alumni Innovation Award from the University of Bath to continue developing Beauty Switch and received a Citizenship Award from the School of Management for her contributions during her BSc International Management degree. Natasha is excited to be spending the next year working on Beauty Switch to launch the platform in 2023.

University of Bath Enterprise: My Entrepreneurial Journey