PUBLIC EVENT
Listen as our panel of experts digest the recent government-commissioned independent review of university spinouts. The panel shared their thoughts on what the review’s findings mean for spinouts in the UK. and then engaged with the audience in a Q&A.
Chaired by Dr John Lazar CBE FREng, Co-Founder and General Partner at Enza Capital.
The other speakers include:
- Nathan Benaich, Founder and General Partner of Air Street Capital
- Professor Cathy Craig, CEO of INCISIV, Ulster University
- Chas Bountra, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Professor of Translational Medicine, University of Oxford
Sir John Lazar CBE FREng
Sir John is a software engineer and entrepreneur with experience of building and managing successful global businesses. He is Chair of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which aims to help young people realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. He is also co-founder, General Partner, and a Limited Partner at Enza Capital, which backs founders and teams using technology to solve large and meaningful problems across Africa. He sits on the boards of multiple African technology companies and previously served as the Chair of What3words. He was awarded a CBE for services to engineering in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2016 and was knighted for services to engineering and technology in the His Majesty The King’s New Year Honours List 2025. Sir John was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2011 and chaired the Academy’s Enterprise Committee, which supports startups and scaleups across the UK and globally through the Enterprise Hub. He has also been a member of the Academy’s Education and Skills Committee and played an active role in developing the programme of study for England’s school Computer Science curriculum. Sir John has also been a judge and mentor for the Academy’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, which trains and backs early-stage African engineering companies. He has spent many years working on tech-related non-profit initiatives in Africa, especially building “digital blacksmiths” and maker labs. He has been an active angel investor and technology start-up mentor in the UK and Africa, with more than 40 individual pre-seed/seed investments. He graduated from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar with an MSc in Computation and a DPhil in History, following an undergraduate degree in Computer Science at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Sir John was elected as President of the Royal Academy of Engineering at its 48th AGM in 2024.
Professor Cathy Craig
Cathy Craig is a professor of experimental psychology at Ulster University. With over 25 years’ research experience in performance psychology and more than 100 scientific publications, she is a recognized global ‘thought leader’ in the use of virtual reality to understand and improve human performance. With a burning desire to get her research out of the lab to make a difference to people’s lives, she started INCISIV in 2018 to develop VR-enabled solutions to help people perform at their best. Whether it be a budding young goalkeeper trying to get that extra 1% to pull off a match winning save (CleanSheet), or an elite ice-hockey player trying to return to competition following a head injury (MOViR), INCISIV’s VR technologies are bringing benefits to the wider world of sport, health and well-being.
Nathan Benaich
Nathan is the Founder and General Partner of Air Street Capital, a venture capital firm investing in AI-first technology and life science companies. He is co-author the annual State of AI Report and write the monthly Guide to AI newsletter. Nathan also founded The Research and Applied AI Summit, a community for entrepreneurs and researchers in AI, and serve as Managing Trustee of The RAAIS Foundation, a UK-registered charity with a mission to advance education and research in artificial intelligence for the common good. We offer grants for open source projects, research and education. He os also leading Spinout.fyi, which seeks to improve university spinout creation starting with open anonymised data on deal terms. Nathan earned an M.Phil and Ph.D. in computational and experimental cancer research as a Gates and Dr. Herchel Smith Scholar at the University of Cambridge, and a BA in biology from Williams College. He has published research that leverages both experimental and computational approaches to understand how we might stem the fatal spread of cancer around the body.
Chas Bountra
Chas is Pro-Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Professor of Translational Medicine at the University of Oxford. He is Director of the Centre for Medicines Discovery in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine and Associate Member of the Department of Pharmacology. Chas is an invited expert on several government and charitable research funding bodies, and an advisor for many academic, biotech and pharma drug discovery programmes.