Meet the MPLS Enterprise and Innovation Fellows
Below are profiles of all the current and previous Enterprise Fellows.
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Ping Lu Dr Ping Lu is a scientist. She is passionate about computer vision, machine learning and healthcare. She gained her post-doctoral research experience in medical imaging and biomedical signal analysis at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Engineering Science. She holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Bern, Switzerland. She studied computer science for both her bachelor's and master's degrees. |
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Massimo Mariello Massimo holds a BSc (Industrial Engineering, 2015) and an MSc(2017)/PhD(2021) in Materials Engineering and Nanotechnology (University of Salento, Italian Institute of Technology, Italy). He worked on flexible piezo-triboelectric nanogenerators for biosensing/energy-harvesting. As postdoctoral scientist at EPFL (Switzerland, 2021-2023), he worked on thin-film implantable neuroprostheses. His research involves micro-devices, soft (bio)materials, translational medicine. He is currently senior postdoctoral researcher at the IBME (Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford) in advanced bioelectronics. He is member of the Italian Professional Body of Engineers and Standard-Bearer of Labour of the Italian Republic. |
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Pawel Puczkarski Pawel is an expert in nanotechnology and nanoelectronics. He obtained his DPhil from Materials Department at Oxford, where he specialized in graphene and molecular electronics. Upon completion of his DPhil course he was awarded with EPSRC Doctoral Prize. Successively he took on a postdoctoral researcher position at the Department of Chemistry at Oxford, where he specializes in biosensing and single particle detection. Pawel is interested in science communication as well as science policy and creation of vibrant scientific environment where innovation can thrive. |
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Chenyang Wang Chenyang Wang is a Postdoctoral researcher at the CHI Lab within the Institute of Biomedical Engineering. His research focuses on advancing innovative machine-learning and deep-learning approaches in the field of healthcare. Chenyang completed his DPhil in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, where his thesis delved into deep-learning methods for predicting drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis based on genome data. He was a Clarendon scholar and a member of Keble College. |
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Sophie Shang |
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Natali Van Zijl Natali is a DPhil student at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Engineering Science, funded by a Rhodes Scholarship. Her research focuses on bringing together physiological modelling and data-driven approaches to explore and increase our understanding of blood flow control in the brain and what exactly is happening when it goes wrong. Prior to this, she completed her Bachelor’s in chemical engineering and Master’s in extractive metallurgical engineering at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. |
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Raquel Teixeira De Sousa Raquel was born and raised in Porto, Portugal. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Oxford Bee Lab at the John Krebs Field Station, in the Department of Biology, University of Oxford. She has a BSc in Applied Biology from the Universidade do Minho (Braga, Portugal), an MSc in Toxicology and Ecotoxicology from the Universidade de Aveiro (Aveiro, Portugal), and conducted research at the Universidade do Porto (Porto, Portugal) before commencing her PhD honeybee research in the UK. |
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Hao Zhang Hao is a member of the Chinese Chemical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Electrochemical Society and the London Centre for Nanotechnology. He graduated from Nanjing University in 2019, focusing on the preparation of metal-organic framework-derived materials and their applications in electrocatalysis. Hao entered Imperial College London for a PhD on a full scholarship, where he graduated in 2022 with the John Matthey PhD Prize and then joined the Department of Chemistry of the University of Oxford as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. |
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Liang He Liang is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford and a Governing Body Fellow at Kellogg College. The core of his research explores the dynamic interplay between soft robotics, haptic and VR technologies, and wearable robotics. He received his PhD from Imperial College London, where his focus was on the transformative field of medical robotics. |
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Monica Armengol (Fellow) is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Engineering Science working on the development of medical devices for paediatric applications. She is a former Biodesign fellow with interest in translating her research to real-life applications. She has won several entrepreneurship competitions, and participated in start-up accelerators and incubators across Europe. |
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Huiqi (Yvonne) Lu (Fellow) is a Daphne Jackson and Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow in clinical machine learning at the Department of Engineering Science. She is also a Fulford Junior Research Fellowship of Somerville College. Yvonne obtained her DPhil in Industrial Informatics in 2008. She is an enterprise-minded engineer with a genuine interest in social impact and healthcare innovations. The fundamental purpose of her research is to devise AI-based innovations to monitor a patient's health status in a predictive manner, providing better-personalised treatment and reducing the cost to make it accessible to people living in low-and-middle-income countries. Yvonne is the PI of the "Gestational Diabetes: Predictive monitoring and Management", and she collaborates closely with Sensyne Health plc and the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust Foundations. |
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Dr Shilpa Nagarajan is a Novo Nordisk Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oxford Centre of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism at the University of Oxford. Her academic work focuses on the cellular and genetic characterisation of chronic metabolic diseases, including insulin resistance, obesity and fatty liver disease. As a pharma-funded Fellow, RisingWISE alumna and a founding member of the Industry Fellows Postdoc Network, Shilpa has always been interested in bridging the gap between ‘academia’ and ‘industry’ and is passionate about supporting researchers in developing their own enterprising ideas. |
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Maria Violaris (Associate) is a third year DPhil student researching quantum information at the Oxford Mathematical Institute and Department of Physics. As an Oxford physics undergraduate in 2019, Maria founded Oxford University Quantum Information Society, ran several quantum computing workshops and was an Oxford Foundry Student Fellow. She then interned at quantum computing start-up Riverlane in 2020, where she built a Raspberry Pi quantum computing lab. Maria took part in PushQuantum's Quantum Entrepreneurship Laboratory 2021-2022, where she pitched a quantum software start-up to improve electric grid resiliency. She has won multiple awards for science communication, and writes articles for Physics World. She is organising a national schools quantum video competition, and is creating YouTube videos with IBM Quantum. |
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Dr Yige Sun (Fellow) is a PDRA and Faraday Institution Research Fellow in the Nextrode project with Prof. Patrick Grant. Her work involves microstructural manipulation and analysis of lithium-ion battery electrode microstructure. As a STEM researcher, she started her enterprise journey in 2010 as a student entrepreneur in Tsinghua University, where she graduated as the Excellent Student Leader. She was a junior researcher at National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), where she continued her enterprise exploring, and invented 2 granted Japan patents. She engaged in entrepreneurship workshops/courses both in China and Japan. After which she came to Oxford, participated in the postdoc enterprise courses RisingWISE in 2019. Now as an MPLS Enterprise and Innovation Fellow, she will work with the divisional Enterprise team and the department to help shape an enterprise development programme tailored for postgraduates, postdocs, early career academics and research staff. She is happy to chat about music, traveling as well as enterprise and innovation, to share ideas/thoughts virtually and eventually in person. Outside of work, Yige is an archer in Oxford Archers club, who is gathering strength and waiting for the archery fields to open soon… Read an interview with Yige and an article she has written, 'Why explore?' Yige has also been interviewed for a Faraday Institution article on her research. Contact: yige.sun@materials.ox.ac.uk |
Dr Stefano Germano (Fellow) is a scientist with a great passion for innovation. He currently is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science. His research focuses on how Artificial Intelligence and Semantic Technologies can improve knowledge management in non-conventional environments.
Since the beginning of his career, Stefano has combined purely academic activities with industrial ones. He has been involved in various international research projects with academic partners as well as small and big companies. He has worked as a consultant and scientific advisor for spin-off and small businesses in the information technology field. Always eager to practise and learn more about innovation and innovative projects, he participated in several activities, competitions, events, and courses on these topics.
Read an interview with Stefano
Contact: stefano.germano@cs.ox.ac.uk
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Dr Heloise Greeff is a Junior Research Fellow in Engineering at the CHI Lab at the University of Oxford, and member of Linacre College. Her work focuses on creating novel machine learning algorithms for remote health monitoring systems in limited-resource settings. Her previous research resulted in the patented system for handpump monitoring in rural Kenya and Bangladesh. She is now leading CHI Lab’s Wellcome Trust-funded initiative on critical care innovations for LMICs. Heloïse has an entrepreneurial focus on needs-led data-driven technologies and the importance of interdisciplinary collaborations to deliver impactful solutions. She was named as one of South Africa’s Fifty Inspiring Women in tech and joint winner of the Oxford Vice-Chancellor’s Innovation award. Read an interview with Heloise. Contact: heloise.greeff@eng.ox.ac.uk |
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Dr Yige Sun is a PDRA and Faraday Institution Research Fellow in the Nextrode project with Prof. Patrick Grant. Her work involves microstructural manipulation and analysis of lithium-ion battery electrode microstructure. As a STEM researcher, she started her enterprise journey in 2010 as a student entrepreneur in Tsinghua University, where she graduated as the Excellent Student Leader. She was a junior researcher at National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), where she continued her enterprise exploring, and invented 2 granted Japan patents. She engaged in entrepreneurship workshops/courses both in China and Japan. After which she came to Oxford, participated in the postdoc enterprise courses RisingWISE in 2019. Now as an MPLS Enterprise and Innovation Fellow, she will work with the divisional Enterprise team and the department to help shape an enterprise development programme tailored for postgraduates, postdocs, early career academics and research staff. She is happy to chat about music, traveling as well as enterprise and innovation, to share ideas/thoughts virtually and eventually in person. Outside of work, Yige is an archer in Oxford Archers club, who is gathering strength and waiting for the archery fields to open soon… Contact: yige.sun@materials.ox.ac.uk |
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Dr Stefano Germano is a scientist with a great passion for innovation. He currently is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science. His research focuses on how Artificial Intelligence and Semantic Technologies can improve knowledge management in non-conventional environments. Since the beginning of his career, Stefano has combined purely academic activities with industrial ones. He has been involved in various international research projects with academic partners as well as small and big companies. He has worked as a consultant and scientific advisor for spin-off and small businesses in the information technology field. Always eager to practise and learn more about innovation and innovative projects, he participated in several activities, competitions, events, and courses on these topics. Read an interview with Stefano Contact: stefano.germano@cs.ox.ac.uk |
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Dr Fawad Jamshed is a Lead Engineer at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Engineering Science. Before joining Engineering Science, he was working at the Nuffield Department of Medicine (NDM) and held an honorary contract with the NHS. At NDM, Fawad collaborated on joint projects with Public Health England, Public Health Wales, Public Health Scotland, and Oxford Nanopore Technologies on next-generation public health care projects. Prior to NDM, Fawad worked at Neurolex Group, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, and collaborated with Medical Research Council - Cognitive and Brain Science Unit on a number of different projects. He has also worked as a consultant with industrial partners, particularly in the healthcare industry, and assisted them in developing products under regulatory controls (FDA + MHRA). He is currently a member of Congregation. Contact: fawad.jamshed@eng.ox.ac.uk |
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Dr Imad Ahmed is an environmental chemist, innovator and developer. He was a research fellow at the Department of Earth Sciences and has extensive research experience in environmental nanochemistry and advanced analytical instrumentations applied to ‘Chemical Speciation of Elements’. He is interested in enabling and creating smart sustainable innovations that provide simple and efficient solutions to environmental and pollution-related health problems. He is the founder of ‘Nanolyse Technologies’, a spinout company of Oxford University that specialises in building chemical sensor technologies for measuring pollution. He is a Chartered Chemist and currently serves as a Council Member of the RSC Material Chemistry Division and the RSC Nomination Committee. More recently, he was elected a representative of the Spectroscopy User Committee at Diamond Light Source. He was formerly an Ideas-2-Impact Fellow at the Oxford Saïd Business School. |
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Dr Martine Abboud is a Junior Research Fellow in Chemical Biology at the University of Oxford. She is interested in enabling scientists, the community, and policy makers to work together efficiently and is pursuing work on antibiotic resistance, oxygen sensing, and metabolic enzymes involved in disease. Martine has a special entrepreneurial interest in the UK and the Middle-Eastern region. She has been recognised in her field as a Future Leader by the American Chemical Society and was named as one of Forbes 30 Under 30 - Europe. Read an interview with Martine. Contact: martine.abboud@chem.ox.ac.uk |
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Dr Ti Xu is a physicist by academic training. His DPhil was on the topic of magnetic resonance imaging physics (Lincoln College 2017). He has work experience in education, healthcare innovation, and venture capital. He is particularly passionate about the convergence of digital technologies with health and wellness, and he is a co-founder of a digital health startup that is part of the University of Oxford Incubator. Currently he is one of the programme managers of EPL-HIT, Enterprise Process Labs - High Intensity Training, which is designed to teach doctoral and postdoctoral researchers the skills necessary to identify enterprising opportunities and to pursue high-impact innovation. He was formerly an Ideas-2-Impact Fellow at the Oxford Saïd Business School. Outside of work, Ti is an avid cyclist and is frequently training in various parts of the world. Contact: tianyou.xu@ouh.nhs.uk |
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Dr. Jiaoyan Chen is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford. He works for the group of knowledge representation and reasoning on some projects about data analytics and semantic technologies, most of which are incorporation with industry partners. He has wide research interests including semantic table matching, knowledge graph correction, semantic embedding, knowledge-based learning, machine learning explanation, etc. He was previously a PostDoctoral Researcher in GIScience Research Group in Heidelberg University, working on learning and reasoning for spatial data. Jiaoyan did his Ph.D in Computer Science and Technology in Zhejiang University, with the thesis about knowledge reasoning and learning for spatio-temporal predictive analytics problems. Contact: jiaoyan.chen@cs.ox.ac.uk |
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Melanie Ghoul is a Junior research fellow at Worcester College and a postdoc in evolutionary microbiology at the Zoology Department at the University of Oxford. Her work is focused on using computational and experimental techniques to study the problems with antibiotic resistance and tolerance in clinical pathogens. Melanie is an aspiring entrepreneur and this led her to explore the enterprise world. She has so far scientifically advised for colleagues' start-up/spin-off companies, advised industry on problems such as the antibiotic resistance problem, engaged in internships with startups, and participated in courses such as the Ideas 2 impact course for entrepreneurship at the Said Business School. She has also applied for several entrepreneurial grant schemes and has an ambition to slowly but surely be an active entrepreneur that can apply her own academic work. Contact: melanie.ghoul@zoo.ox.ac.uk |
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Weixin Song is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Department of Materials, University of Oxford. His research project is to characterise battery materials and interface structure underpinning the development of solid state batteries by electron microscopy techniques, such as TEM, STEM, EELS, EDX and electron ptychography. He received his Ph.D. in Material Electrochemistry from Imperial College London in 2019 funded by the President’s PhD Scholarship. He has been a member in Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) of Advanced Characterisation of Materials and London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN). He completed his BSc in 2012 and MSc in 2015 from Central South University, China. He has research interests in materials electrochemistry and characterisation with materials application in energy storage, electrocatalysis and photoelectrocatalysis. He has 42 publications that have been cited more than 2400 times and 18 licensed patents. He has contributed one book chapter published by Springer. He received the STFC Future Early Career Award in 2016 and MPLS Enterprise Fellowship in 2019. He is keen on the research and enterprise programs related to energy materials. Contact: weixin.song@materials.ox.ac.uk |
Erfan Soliman
Viktoryia Shautsova viktoryia.shautsova@materials.ox.ac.uk
Craig Thompson craig.thompson@zoo.ox.ac.uk
David Hume david.hume@maths.ox.ac.uk
Himanshu Jain himanshu.jain@chem.ox.ac.uk