The Team

Dr David Sarphie (co-founder and director)

Founding investor & director; co-founder of PowderJect and former-CEO of Acrobot, current CEO of Bio Nano Consulting and Seroxo.

David is a bio-nanotechnology entrepreneur with over 25 years’ experience in project management, senior management and CEO positions within start-up drug-delivery, diagnostics, medical device and consultancy companies. David was one of the founders of PowderJect Pharmaceuticals, still regarded as one of the UK’s most successful biotech companies. Since then David has led the formation of several successful technology companies.

Dr Rubina Mian (co-inventor, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer)

Co-inventor & co-founder; CSO.

Rubina has over 25 years’ research experience within academia and the pharmaceutical industry, having worked as a research scientist, research fellow, senior lecturer, and as a non-executive director for an NHS trust. She is a founding member of Oxford MediStress. She has a granted patent and has been a business advisor for companies with a turnover up to 100 million pounds.

Dr Chris Johnson (Project Manager)

Dr Chris Johnson is an experienced project manager with
15 years’ project management & product development experience in
medtech; previously responsible for product development at Plasticell

Russell Banks (Chief Financial Officer)

Russell Banks (CFO) has over 30 years of senior financial management
experience, with over 20 years operating at the level of Finance
Director/CFO within the life science sector, including Cephalon Inc.

Xiaomeng Li (Clinical Research Manager) 

Recently completed a PhD in Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London, where her main research interest focused on the interaction between immune system and cancer microenvironment.

Her PhD also involved running a collaborative clinical trial between Imperial College London and Henan Provincial People’s Hospital, China.

MRes (Diabetes and Obesity) from Imperial College London.

BSc Pharmacology from Newcastle University

Yifei Cao (Director)

Graduated in International Business Management from Royal Holloway (BSc Hons.) and Coventry University (MSc.). He has an excellent track record of strategic and operational management and experience in sales and marketing across Asia and Europe. He has dealt with customers as diverse as the army, police force, surgeons, hospital managers and laboratory staff. He started his career in a global medical devices company.

Nikolaus Huber, DVM, Dr.med.vet., Vet-innovation Advisor

Nikolaus works at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria (Vetmeduni). After graduating from the same university with a specialization in conservation medicine, he worked as a wildlife veterinarian in Alaska and Sweden. After a subsequent stopover at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland, he returned to Austria and completed his PhD at the Vetmeduni with a focus on stress physiology. Intending to improve animal health and welfare, he has been conducting research with and around the LCC method on wild, domestic and companion animals for more than a decade.