Directors

Mike Brooke – Non-Executive Director

Michael Brooke has worked in the computer industry for almost 40 years, predominantly specialising in founding, developing, floating and/or selling companies within the computer software, hardware and services sector.
In 1967, he founded Datasolve, which was acquired by BOC in 1973, and in 1976 he founded Micro Business Systems Plc, which became the largest PC reseller in the UK before floating on the Official List in 1983. In 1986, he co-founded Telephone Information Services Plc, sold to management in 1991, and in 1994 he co-founded CMS Ltd which was sold to Millward Brown Limited in 1998. In 1991, he co-founded Comino Plc, which floated on AIM in 1997 and moved to the Official List in 1999.
Michael is currently a Non-Executive Director of Quester VCT3 plc. He is a member of the Advisory Board for Corporate Finance for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

James Graham – Non-Executive Director

James spent 16 years in London with Morgan Stanley where he played a significant role in the development of its Equities business becoming Managing Director (Sales/Trading) within the European Equity Division.
He then joined Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette where he helped to establish their European Equity business prior to its sale to Credit Suisse in 2001. James has considerable knowledge and experience of the global capital markets and a comprehensive network of relationships with major international financial institutions. He has been a resident of New Zealand since 2002 where he has acted as an advisor to a number of local businesses.

Andy Bottomley – Executive Director

Andy Bottomley was a main board member of Durlacher plc the UK LSE listed investment bank (now owned by a division of Lazard)  specializing in high growth companies. He was also a non-executive director of a major London based hedge fund advising them on unlisted securities investing.
Andy has been the founder director of numerous early stage high growth companies. By way of example he was one of the founders of KVS Inc, the email archiving vendor which was sold in 2004 for $225m.
Andy has director level experience in companies covering private equity, public company, investment banking, asset management and operational management.

Ian Watson – Executive Director

Ian Watson's professional background is in corporate finance law ultimately as an equity partner in a City of London law firm.
In 1996, Ian was a founder director of a successful e-commerce retailer which was sold to a major UK plc in 1999.  Between 1999 and 2002, he was also the founder of two other successful technology start-ups, one in the area of digital distribution and corporate communications, and the other in the field of web radio and advertising.  Both are now listed on AIM.
Ian has private and public company board level operational and advisory experience including fundraisings, listings and M&A transactions.

Dr Ben Ferrari – Managing Director –IP Management

Ben has worked with a wide range of knowledge and technology transfer programmes in the UK higher education sector. Before joining Imprimatur, he was the Director of UniSdirect, the technology transfer and research support division of the University of Surrey. Previous to that he served as Head of Research and Enterprise at Royal Holloway, University of London and was a Director of Research and Enterprise at the University of St Andrews.
Ben has played a leading role in development of two of the largest UK higher education knowledge transfer partnerships; WestFocus and the SETsquared partnership. Between them, these two partnerships have won £24m of funding from Government through the Higher Education Innovation Fund. Ben was responsible for the creation and management of incubation space and, with colleagues from partner institutions, has raised capital to support establishment of early stage investment funds. He has been involved in a wide range of European research programmes and has represented the United Kingdom as an expert at both the EC and Council of Europe.
Ben is responsible for the establishment and management of relationships with partner institutions through delivery of high quality technology transfer support and associated services.

Dr Christopher Ball – Director

Chris joins Imprimatur from Johnson & Johnson, where he held a European strategic marketing position with LifeScan, the diabetes diagnostics franchise. Prior to this, he was a founder director of a medical publishing company, spun out of the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine at the University of Oxford and worked as a doctor in the UK National Health Service for 5 years.
Chris holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, where he was a Fulbright Scholar and a Palmer Scholar, a medical degree from Oxford University, and a bachelor’s degree in pathology from Cambridge University. He is a member of the Royal College of Physicians of London.
Chris evaluates opportunities Imprimatur is considering in the healthcare and medical technologies sectors and supports portfolio companies to build value.

Dr Peter Curley – Director

Peter has both strong scientific and strong commercial backgrounds. He undertook his PhD research in optical physics at Southampton and Strathclyde Universities sponsored by the National Physical Laboratory. Peter's post doctoral work was funded by the Royal Society and the European Union at the Technical University of Vienna and the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. During this period Peter produced 25 publications in specialist scientific journals.
Peter also has eight years of industry and commercial experience in both technical and sales roles in a range of high value engineering sectors working in both SMEs and large organisations such as Thales and Invensys.
Peter holds an MBA from Cranfield University, the Chartered Institute of Marketing postgraduate diploma, and is a member of IEE and CIM.
Peter directs Imprimatur Capital’s investment activity in the area of physical sciences and engineering where his core role is in the evaluation of investment opportunities and in working alongside investee businesses to build value.

Rosana Di Giorgio – Director -Brazil

Before joining Imprimatur Capital, Rosana served as Intellectual Property (IP) & Partnership Development Director at Inova Unicamp, the Technology Licencing Office of the State University of Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil. With a focus on innovation, she was responsible for business development between the university and private or public institutions. In 3 years of operation, she signed more than 200 technology transfer agreements and was directly involved in both IP development and licensing. Rosana was also responsible for the definition of policies, processes, legal affairs, team build and management of the university’s IP portfolio.
Previously, Rosana was an Executive Director at facTI, a private foundation operating in Information Technology and was Corporate Business Development Manager and Semiconductor Division Manager at CPqD, the biggest research and development center for telecommunications and IT in Latin America.
Rosana has a Master’s degree in electrical engineering (MSEE) from Unicamp and an MBA from by FGV (Fundação Getúlio Vargas) and Ohio University.
Rosana is responsible for running the Brazil regional office and all of its activities.

Toby Moore – Director – Baltic Sea Region

As a banker with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), for the past 12 years Toby Moore has been originating, structuring and implementing equity and debt transactions in a variety of sectors in Central and Eastern Europe, primarily in the Baltic States and Russia. In addition to a number of direct equity investments and board positions, Toby's main focus has been on private equity funds where he represented EBRD as a core investor and was active on a number of fund boards and investment committees.
Based in Riga for eight years he headed EBRD's operations in Latvia for more than three years. He was one of the founders of the Latvian Venture Capital Association and has assisted the Latvian government in developing their innovation and venture capital policies. He has a BSc in biochemistry from Adelaide University (Australia) and an MBA from Durham University (UK).
Toby is responsible for developing the business and managing Imprimatur’s investment activities in the Baltic States, Nordic Countries and St. Petersburg.

Janis Janevics – Associate Director – Baltic Sea Region

Prior to joining Imprimatur, Janis was part of the executive management team of Eko Investors, an early stage venture capital company in Latvia. Janis was CFO and a member of the board taking part in the investment evaluation and decision making process. Janis also acted as chairman of the board and a member of the board of a number of investee companies where he had a significant role in the business development process including financing, budgets, recruitment and marketing. Earlier, Janis worked for Suprema, a leading pan-Baltic investment bank where he specialized in corporate finance advisory working on M&A deals. He also worked in financial product origination and sales for Hansabank Markets, the capital markets arm of Hansabank, the leading banking group in the Baltics.
Janis holds a B.Sc. degree in economics and business administration from the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and an MSc in finance from the Stockholm School of Economics in Stockholm.
Janis is involved in strengthening relationships with university partners in the Baltic Sea region and in structuring and implementing equity investments in technology companies emanating from those universities and other local sources.

Ligia Cardoso – Associate – Capital Markets

Ligia is originally from Brazil and came to the UK in 2003 to complete a further degree in Business Studies. With a business and commercial background coupled to cultural and linguistic fluency, Ligia focuses on the development and financing of Imprimatur Capital’s portfolio companies and is also responsible for supporting the growth of Imprimatur’s activity in Brazil and South America.

Tanya Mackenzie – Associate

Tanya is Russian by birth and since moving to the UK has performed various senior administrative and accounting roles. Tanya has a degree in Economics from the Belarusian State University of Information Science and Radio Electronics and is a qualified ACCA Accounting Technician. Tanya is fluent in English and Russian and her role covers office management, technology and systems support, general accounting and working with colleagues in liaising with Imprimatur's partners and contacts across the world.

Alexander Kvashnin – Senior Consultant Russia

Alexander Kvashnin is based in Novosibirsk and is primarily responsible for developing and managing key relationships and  ensuring efficient exchange of information between IC and stakeholders in the region. Since 2006, he has been a director of Marmirus LLC , an IC portfolio company. He holds a Diploma in Civil Engineering from Siberian Mining and Steel Academy and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering Technologies from Novosibirsk State Architecture and Civil Engineering University.  He is the author of 9 patents covering methods and devices for cold weather concreting and of more than 50 research publications dedicated to electric and thermal processes control in cold weather concreting. Alexander has wide experience of project management and technology transfer support; he graduated from the Training for Project Management Trainers’ Programme of the World Bank and since 1994 has been a Member of Russian Association of Project Management. In 2004 he became a Member of the Council of the Eurasian Association of Technology Transfer Managers and other posts held include Head of Prospective Developments and Foreign Liaisons Department of Novosibirsk State Architecture and Civil Engineering University; Deputy Director for Project Management at Koltsovo Innovation Centre, Novosibirsk.  He has participated in a number of European Commission Projects (FINRUS, TACIS, EuropAid) and authored key support documentation for the 2006 EuropAid Project “Science and Commercialisation of Technologies”.   Alexander is also a part-time trainer in Innovation Project Management at the Russian President’s Programme and MBA at Novosibirsk State University.

Gala E Shaposhnikova

Following a career as a research fellow at the Center for International Research and Modern History at Tomsk State University, Gala joined the Tomsk Innovation Support Center (TISC) which she now manages. TISC was established in 1998 to promote innovation and since then has greatly influenced the technology commercialization policy and systems in the Tomsk region. TISC is an active member of the Russian Technology Transfer Network and is one of the largest and most highly regarded consulting companies in Western Siberia. 
In 2003 Gala founded the first Russian business angel network aimed at supporting innovation projects. Gala also works as a Strategic Management tutor at the MBA Centre at Tomsk Polytechnic University and is a member of the Russian Association of International Research.

Advisory Board

George Cautherley

George Cautherley has spent all his professional life working in Hong Kong and China and has built a first-rate reputation and a deep understanding of the business environment in these regions.  Mr. Cautherley has held and still holds a number of senior executive and advisory roles in the medical products industry.  His principle business activity has been in marketing and distributing pharmaceuticals and medical products in Hong Kong and in Mainland China.  More recently he has expanded his business activities to include manufacturing with the establishment of a diagnostic reagent manufacturing company in Shenzhen, as well as additional investments in companies manufacturing diagnostic reagents also in Shenzhen and in Shanghai. These activities were further enhanced with his participation in the establishment of the Hainan Health Care Laboratories Ltd pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Haikou.  Aside from business, George plays an active role in public policy development in Hong Kong.

Peter Denyer

Peter Denyer currently serves as NED for the ERA Foundation, who contributes to the economic vitality of the UK by supporting activities that help bridge the gap between research and exploitation in electrotechnology.  Additionally, Peter is the NEC and co-Founder of ATEEDA, the semiconductor company providing EDA tools and services for the mixed signal semiconductor industry and winner of the 2007 Scottish Software Award for Best Emerging Software Business.  Peter is also NED and acting Chairman of Keronite, a global technology company with an environmentally-friendly process for the surface treatment of light alloys.Previously, Peter was the founder and CEO of Vision Group plc, the Edinburgh-based creator of CMOS Imager chips used widely in digital cameras. Vision was a successful spin-out from his research at the University of Edinburgh. Peter served as CEO of Vision from its inception in 1990, through its early stages and financing, its UK IPO in 1995, its subsequent growth as a mainstream fabless semiconductor company shipping millions of units, and its eventual sale to ST Microelectronics in 1999. Peter is Executive Chairman of recently listed MicroEmissive Displays Ltd, co-founder and Chairman of Rhetorical Systems and Chairman of Eleksen.

Imants Freibergs (Baltic Sea Region)

Imants Freibergs is the president of the Latvian Information and Communication Technologies Association; a member of the UNESCO International Communications Council and of the UNESCO National Commission of Latvia. He represents Latvia on IT issues through various academic, governmental and non-governmental committees and on an international basis at the World Bank and the UN. Imants was educated in Canada and spent his early career at IBM. He has successfully managed a senior academic career in IT with a commercial career in software development for large financial institutions and in the civil engineering sector. Professor Freibergs has held professorships at McGill University in Montreal, the University of Quebec, the University of Montpellier, and Oxford University. Since 2000 he has been closely involved with the University of Latvia.

Advokat Helge Kringstad (Baltic Sea Region)

Helge Kringstad has held high office in law, international banking, politics and business across Scandinavia, the UK and the Baltics. Mr Kringstad has been a Member of the Board of the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) and was the General Manager of Den Norske Bank with offices in Oslo, London and Riga. He also held the office of Secretary of State of the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Kringstad now runs a commercial legal practice with a specific interest and focus on helping develop commercial activities and international business relationships in Central and Eastern Europe.

Marcus Regueira (Brazil)

Marcus Regueira is the Founding Partner of FIR Capital, a Brazilian venture capital organization, and has over 20 years of international capital markets experience.
After earning his MBA from the Wharton Graduate School of Business, Mr. Regueira served as an officer of Unibanco, one of the largest commercial banks in Brazil.  At Unibanco, he was responsible for the largest project finance portfolio in Latin America.  Mr. Regueira moved to New York where he served as a Director and Vice President of the investment banking, underwriting and capital markets groups of the Bank of America and First Chicago.  During the Brazilian external debt moratorium, he was a member of the negotiating committee. 
Over the course of his career, Mr. Regueira was the lead manager on over $1 billion in syndicated transactions, and represented various multinational and Brazilian corporations in M&A transactions, and technology joint-ventures in Brazil.
Mr. Regueira is a current board member and was previously the President of ABVCAP, the Brazilian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association.  He is also a founder and board member of Instituto Harmann Regueira, a not-for-profit organization focused on social entrepreneurship in Brazil. 

David Roche

David Roche is a world renowned strategist on the movement of global markets and economies. He is a Founder of Independent Strategy where his research informs the activities of many of the worlds best regarded investors. Until 1994, David Roche was Head of Research and Global Strategist at Morgan Stanley. David holds an MA from Trinity College Dublin and an MBA with the highest distinction from INSEAD. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst. David contributes regularly to the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and other top financial publications. He is also a regular commentator on the BBC, CNN and CNBC television networks.

Sergey Tsyganov (Russia)

Professor Sergey Tsyganov is the head of the Innovation Division of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and also heads the Innovation Agency for the Russian National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The NAS is the collection of specialist research institutes throughout the Russian Federation. Most of the country's top research scientists work here.
The RFBR receives 6% of all funds allocated for science in the budget of the Russian Federation. The main portion of the funds available to the Foundation (over 70%) is directed to provide funding to research projects which may have commercial potential. The competitions (which Professor Tsyganov administers and manages) to decide how these funds are allocated, are one of the central planks of Russian science commercialization and utilize an extensive expert network of pre-eminent Russian scientists to determine which projects go forward.
As a scientist he has spent 46 years in fundamental and applied research at the Institute of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences and twelve years at the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. Professor Tsyganov has lectured for the past 20 years at the Moscow Physico-Technical Institute. Professor Tsyganov has published more than 250 scientific and technical papers and has filed 20 inventions and patents.

Mike Walker

Mike Walker is the Group Research and Development Director for the Vodafone Group, with responsibility for the Group's R&D activities world-wide. The role provides technical leadership for Group's long-term business strategy and leadership for the company's work in international technical standards. Since 1996 Mike has been a professor at the University of London, holding the part-time Vodafone Chair in Telecommunications at Royal Holloway. He is also a visiting Professor at the University of Surrey. Mike is vice-chairman of the Mobile VCE, a group of companies and UK universities researching future mobile communications and was recently appointed to the UK Government's Technology Strategy Board. Before joining Vodafone, Mike was Head of Mathematics at Racal Research and prior to that he was an academic at the University of Tuebingen in Germany.

Scientific & Technical Advisory Board

Communications & Networking

Alain Fiocco

Alain Fiocco is Director of the Technology and Marketing organisation at Cisco Systems, responsible for Europe and all emerging markets. His team comprises the most experienced and skilled Technical Consulting Engineers at Cisco. In this position, he leads the technical community at Cisco, setting technology direction and strategies for the Europe, Middle-East, Africa and Latin America region. Alain joined Cisco in 1995 and has been involved in some of the largest European Service Provider Internet backbone design projects, which have included access, edge and IP core technologies and products. He also actively participates in the definition, specification and deployment of innovative services and underlying technologies.

Professor Joe McGeehan

Joe McGeehan is the Professor of Communications Engineering at the University of Bristol. He has pioneered many of the technologies adopted by industry for the next generation of mobile phones as well as other areas of wireless communication; most notably this has been at Securicor where his design was subsequently manufactured by Mobira-Oy (now Nokia) and became the basis of the Company's first civil mobile phone. Joe straddles the public and private sectors combining research at the university with his work as Managing Director for Toshiba Research Europe Ltd. His most recent honour was for services to the communications industry in the 2004 Queen's Birthday Honours List. He was recently placed sixth on a list of global technology leaders by the highly respected technology publication Silicon.com.

Medical Research

Professor Paul Vanhoutte

Professor Paul M Vanhoutte is currently the Head of the Department of Pharmacology, and Director of the BioPharmaceutical Centre, at the University of Hong Kong.  He is Honorary Professor at the Peking Union College (Beijing), the Institute of Materia Medica of Beijing, the Ocean University of Qingdao, the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica.
Born in Belgium, Professor Vanhoutte obtained his degrees and training at the Universities of Ghent and Antwerp (Belgium) and the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN, USA).
From 1992 to 2002, Dr. Vanhoutte was Vice-President R&D, and Director of Discovery Research at the Institut de Recherches Internationales Servier, in Courbevoie (Paris, France). During his tenure as Director of Discovery Research at Servier, he supervised the discovery and preclinical development of drugs designed for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity, central nervous system disorders, cancer and osteoarthritis.

Optics and Photonics

Professor Volodymyr Kovalenko

Professor Volodymyr Kovalenko is the Director of the Laser Technology Research Institute of the National Technical University of Ukraine, Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and is a world renowned expert in laser technology and non-conventional methods of material processing.

Professor Kovalenko began his engineering career in industry in 1962; he received a PhD in laser technology in 1968 from KPI and his DSc from Tula Polytechnic Institute (Russia) in 1980. He has conducted research at Birmingham University (UK), Osaka University and Okayama University (Japan), and McMaster University (Canada). From 1980 - 2000 he was the Dean of Engineering at KPI; during 1992 he was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ohio State University (USA).  Professor Kovalenko is a Fellow of Laser Institute of America; a Member of CIRP (the International Academy for Production Engineering); an Academician-Founder and Vice-President of the Academy of Engineering Sciences of Ukraine and was the Vice-Chairman of The Laser Association of the former USSR.