Our Board

Steve Williams
Chief Technical Officer / Managing Director

Steve has over 25 years of experience in the medical device industry in R & D, Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering and Operations, working on point-of-care diagnostics and drug-device combination products.

At MediSense (now part of Abbot Diabetes Care), Steve was a member of the team that developed the world’s first biosensor device for the measurement of blood glucose, and as the Operations Director at Environmental Sensors Ltd (now Cambridge Sensors Ltd), he led the development of a range of biosensor devices for the measurement of heavy metals and glucose.

In Director-level positions at Cygnus Inc Steve spent the next eight years developing and then manufacturing the Glucowatch Biographer, the first FDA-approved non-invasive glucose monitoring technology before joining Corium International to head up the Advanced Drug Delivery group in R&D, where he was responsible for nonclinical and clinical development of novel microneedle-based transdermal drug-delivery devices.

Steve has a Ph. D and B. Sc in Biochemistry from the University of Southampton.

Dr. Heiner Dreismann
Chairman

Dr. Dreismann has more than 20 years’ experience in biotech and healthcare companies, and was most recently President and CEO of Roche Molecular Systems, a business which he expanded rapidly in six areas – virology, blood screening, women’s health, microbiology, oncology and genomics.

Previously, Dr. Dreismann held various management positions at Roche, including head of integration office diagnostics for the merger of the IVD business of Roche Diagnostics and Boehringer Mannheim – a merger that is widely considered to be one of the most successful in the industry in recent years.

Chris Lowe
Co-Founder and Company Director

Chris is currently a Fellow of Trinity College and a Professor and Director of the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge.

His research work is multidisciplinary and covers aspects of biochemistry, microbiology, chemistry, electrochemistry, physics, electronics and chemical engineering. He is also actively involved in scientific work that includes prototype product development and R&D strategy. His work has led to the launch of many innovative products in the Life Sciences industry over the last 30 years.

He is actively involved in many worldwide collaborations, is on the Editorial Boards of a number of academic journals and is a member of several UK Research Council and Government Committees on Scientific Policy. He has published around 300 peer-revised scientific papers and book chapters and has filed over 40 patents.

Harvey Boulter
Company Director

Harvey is a Founder and Director of Porton Capital.

He has previously had many years' experience in corporate finance, most recently with UBS Warburg in London where he headed the global aerospace and defence team. Prior to this, he worked in UK investment banking where he was involved with a number of transactions including acquisitions, disposals, initial public offerings and a hostile defence.

Harvey is an Associate of the Institute of Accountants, having qualified with Deloitte and Touche in 1994, and is also a Fellow of the Securities Institute. He is a graduate in Economics and Accountancy from the University of Bristol. Smart Holograms is a portfolio company of Porton’s Science and Innovation Fund, which is currently ranked Number One in the S&P Technology Sector.

Andrew Hegarty
Director

Andrew began his career as a corporate financier in 1994 with HSBC Investment Bank, involved in numerous public market transactions including IPOs, capital raisings, and M&A.

He left in 1999 to join Hanson Capital, a privately-owned investment and advisory firm, based in London and Los Angeles, which specialised in early-stage situations and principal investing. In 2001, he joined touchstone Securities,an independent advisory boutique, based in London, which provided high-level corporate finance advice to large corporates, private families and institutions. In 2003 he left to become a principal with P^P Partners, a private family office with £150m under management, engaged in private equity and direct investment.

In 2006 Andrew was appointed a Director of Synergis Technologies, the UK arm of venture investment firm Porton Capital. He now represents Porton Capital as an investor director on five of their UK portfolio companies: Alaska Food Diagnostics, Cellcrypt, Hydroventuri, P2i and Smart holograms. Andrew studied Management Administration at Aston University.