Judges and Mentors

Jeff Skinner

Jeff is Executive Director of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital at LBS. He teaches on several entrepreneurship courses at the School and leads many co-curricular activities supported by IEPC, including all competitions, the London Entrepreneurship Review and the TELL Series. Prior to joining LBS, Jeff was commercial director at University College London (UCL), where he built its Technology Transfer division – including the creation of two seed-funds and new units for consultancy, industry engagement and spin-out creation. He co-founded more than 30 technology-based spin outs that collectively raised more than £30 million in first round capital. Jeff chairs the Review Committee of the Alliance of Technology Transfer Professionals and is past president of the leading UK and European Technology Transfer Associations. He holds a PhD in thin film photonics from UCL and a MBA from LBS.

Dr. Iris Good

Chairman & MD of Good Relations India, an award-winning Indo-British Market Entry & Positioning consultancy with pan-India offices. Iris has been involved in entrepreneurship, technology innovation and commercialization for over 25 years and in market entry to India for two decades. Her company has handled clients like Apple, Bloomberg, Cartier, CNBC, Marks & Spencer and the UN. Iris has a PhD in Biochemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science and two post docs in molecular biology and brain research. She is an experienced NED, a mentor at London Business School and member of Investment Committee at Cambridge Enterprise Seed Fund. 

James Somauroo

James is the founder of somX: the healthtech agency and supports the best healthtech companies in the world. He covers healthtech for Forbes as a contributor and also hosts The Health-Tech Podcast, which has listeners in >100 countries. He is an anaesthetics and ICU doctor by training, has held roles in leadership, management and innovation at NHS England, Health Education England and the British Medical Journal and previously directed two healthtech accelerators; DigitalHealth.London, which provided startups with market access to the NHS, saving £48M for the UK health service and HS., which built, scaled and invested in deep technology companies. He has degrees in medicine, biomedical sciences and education and is a guest lecturer on healthtech innovation and entrepreneurship at academic institutions around the world.

Rana Lonnen​

Rana is Managing Director at dRx Capital,  Novartis HealthTech fund.

Prior to Novartis, Rana worked in the academic, biotech and venture capital sectors in the UK and was Chief Scientific Officer and founder of a biotech. Rana holds a PhD in molecular biology and an executive MBA from Imperial college. She is based out of Switzerland and is currently board observer of portfolio companies, Koneksa, Nuvoair, COTA, H1 insights, Mekonos, Dopavision, Tact ai, Holmusk and Aktana​

Anya Roy

Anya is the co-founder of Syrona Women, a leading digital health startup looking to democratise women’s health, and Head of Seed Investments & Technology at Illumina. She previously worked in lifescience venture capital, investing in deeptech businesses.

Prior to that she worked at Goldman Sachs in London and also for the Investment Banking arm of the European Union in Luxembourg.

She is an alum of Cambridge and Oxford University. She advocates for diversity in entrepreneurship and is passionate about mentoring female students to take up STEM subjects.

Bobby Kaura

Bobby is involved in seed investment and International development of Illumina Accelerator Cambridge. He helped co-launch the accelerator, a genomics and VC backable company creation engine. Previously, he was responsible for heading the commercial market and business development for Illumina EMEA 

Before joining Illumina, Bobby worked in the NHS to deliver sustainable transformation programs and spent several years working in the pharma industry across early research & development, strategic projects office and leading the UK pricing and innovation stream. He is a member of the advisory board at Praesens Foundation and advises health, tech and blockchain startups.

Bobby read his B.Sc in Biology, with a focus on neuroscience and genomics, and an M.Sc in IT from the Queen Mary University of London.

Marc Ceulemans

Marc serves as the Head Strategic Venture Capital Fund - Pharma Equities at Novartis Pharma . In addition Marc supports the NVF on a variety of issues.

Before this appointment he held the position of Head of Finance , Global Business Development & Licensing (Novartis Pharma). Prior to joining Novartis Marc was CFO Europe at Johnson Controls and spent several years at Johnson & Johnson in various countries/roles. Marc holds an MBA from Université Libre de Bruxelles (Solvay Business School) , a MA in Economics ( Lessius Hogeschool Antwerp ) and a MA in Financial Management ( Vlaamse Economische Hogeschool-Brussels) and Bs.Natural Sciences (Open University , still in process)

Dr. Charles Armitage

Charles is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Florence, a venture-backed startup building the technology to power the social care workforce.

Prior to founding Florence, Charles was a doctor for the NHS, where he worked in a number of different specialties.

Dr. Sam Dhesi

Sam is the Director of Secondary Care at Lantum, a workforce management platform that makes it easier for healthcare providers to mobilise their workforce, and for clinicians to work more flexibly. 
Prior to Lantum, Sam has worked as Emerging Technology Lead at the Department of Health and Social Care, reporting directly to England’s CSO, and has built several healthcare startups, one of which raised $6 million. He is now the .
Sam trained as a Medical Doctor as the University of Leeds but after two years of clinical training decided to switch towards the business side of healthcare. 

Dr. Amil Ohri

Anil is the Founder and Chief Executive of Regent’s Park Healthcare (RPH) – a company he founded 20 years ago at the London Business School whilst reading his MBA. He has 30 years of healthcare and business management experience spanning a career as a medical officer and surgeon in the British Army and NHS

Rory Popert

Rory works at Genomic England, where he is as Service Owner of the suite of genomic analysis products used by academia and biotech companies to advance science and inform drug discovery.
He holds a Visiting Professor position at ESCP Europe Business School, and mentors Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence technology start-ups for the ImagineIf (Cambridge University) and P4 Precision Medicine (UCL, Barclays Eagle Labs) Accelerators.
Prior to joining Genomics England, Rory was a Senior Engagement Manager at Strategy& (formerly Booz & Co.), specialising in Commercial Strategy in Pharma and Life Sciences.
Rory co-founded the Health Tech Challenge in 2015 during his MBA at London Business School.

Dr. Jordan Abdi

Jordan is a medical doctor and Schwarzman Scholar from London with a decades’ experience in Healthtech having founded and managed healthcare businesses in the UK and China.
His experiences include founding award-winning companies such as pocketNurse, which worked to improve the inherent flaws in the clinical education system, to building the London Forum of Science Policy, a think tank bridging the gap between academia and policy, to joining the British delegation to the G20 Summit in Hangzhou as a health policy advisor.​​​​

He currently serves as Director of Growth Operations at Holmusk, a health data science company, and as and Governor at Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.​