Peter Cowley - Chairman of Cambridge Angels & President of the European Business Angel Network (EBAN), Cambridge Angels, Director, Camdata

Peter Cowley, a Cambridge university technology graduate, founded and ran over 10 businesses in technology and property over the last 35+ years. He has built up portfolio of 60+ angel investments with 3 good exits and several failures. He is the WBAF Best Angel Investor of the World and was UK Angel of the Year 2014/15. He has mentored hundreds of entrepreneurs and on the board of eight startups. In 2011, he founded and has since run Martlet: a Corporate Angel, investing (currently £5+M) from the balance sheet of Marshall, a £2bn revenue Cambridge engineering company. He is chair of the Cambridge Angels and is a fellow in Entrepreneurship at the Judge Management School in Cambridge and has recently been appointed as the President of the European Business Angel Network (EBAN). He is a non-executive director of the UK Business Angel Association and on the investment committee of the Angel Co-fund. He has also had 16 years’ experience as chair, treasurer and trustee of the boards of seven charities and is voluntary equity finance chair for the Federation of Small Businesses. He is sharing his and others’ experience and anecdotes of angel investing by publishing online and offline – see www.investedinvestor.com

Neil Dickins - Director, IC Resources

Neil is a founder of Intellectual Capital Resources, Europe’s premier technology recruitment firm. He started the company with the raison d'être of being an active participant in the technology community, rather than an ‘external supplier’. This means that every IC Resources business decision is made with the best long term interests of clients and candidates in mind. It also means that IC Resources is happy to sponsor Discovering Start Ups, one of the industry’s most valuable events. Beyond the office, Neil can be found occasionally treading the boards of the Questors Theatre and regularly toiling up and down a basketball court. IC Resources recruits technical and commercial roles from entry to Cxo level.

Robert Driver - Senior Advisor, UKTIN

Bob currently is a senior advisor for the UK Telecoms Innovation Network (UKTIN), having been interim head of this new organisation to February 2023. Bob has helped to create an innovation network for the UK Telecoms industry, bringing together industry, academia, and government to catalyse telecoms R&D investment, cooperation, and commercialisation.

Founded in 2022, UKTIN is delivered by a consortium of four partners - who draw on their distinct strengths in a collaborative approach: The Digital Catapult (Lead), Cambridge Wireless, WM5G and the University of Bristol. UKTIN has been initially funded by the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to drive the Telecom Supply Chain Diversification Strategy.

From 2018 to October 2022 Bob led the UK5G programme on behalf of CW. CW was the lead partner for a consortium chosen by the Department of Digital, Culture Media and Sport, to create and deliver the national 5G Innovation Network. The consortium included CW, the KTN and TM Forum. UK5G brought together and marketed the UK’s 5G eco-system - including the national Testbed & Trials programme along with other business-led 5G initiatives.

Bob was CEO of CW from May 2015 to November 2018 focusing on leading the development of the organisation, broadening its reach with other sectors and clusters, while retaining the unique culture and dynamism of the CW community.

Prior to working at CW, Bob was Director for Technology at UK Trade & Investment (now part of the Department for Business and Trade) where he successfully led national teams helping UK tech companies to access overseas opportunities as well as attracting technology inward investment into the UK. He also coordinated the UKTI science and innovation agenda and was responsible for the delivery of UKTI events from small missions to large trade fairs.

Abhi Naha - Digital Accelerator Director, PwC UK

Abhi Naha is the Digital Accelerator Director at PwC. He is creating and leading a new tech division for PwC. The Digital Accelerator solves innovation challenges using the power of scale ups and ecosystems for greater insights, impact and value creation.

Abhi was the CCO of CW Cambridge Wireless and CEO of the Product as a Service Consortium. At CW, Abhi initiated and lead on the 5G private network testbed in Cambridge, corporate digital innovation accelerators and high value collaborations.

Abhi was the CEO and Founder of Zone V a Cambridge start up backed by Qualcomm and ARM focused on empowering people with aging eyes and visually impairment through inclusively designed smartphone software. He held senior roles at Powermat, San Jose based Synaptics and advisory roles for Goldman Sachs and Silver Lake in the area of mobile user interface technologies. Abhi is a senior advisor to an autonomous vehicle mobility scale up Conigital, Industry Partner (Digital Infrastructure) for Arjun Infrastructure Partners with 5 Billion Euros of assets under management and an Ambassador for the United Nations Global Sustainability Index Institute. Abhi studied Electronics and Electrical Engineering, has an MBA in International Marketing and authored a book on Mobile Handset Design when approached by Cambridge University Press. More recently Abhi has created an initiative to help train widows in developing countries learn python programming, gain financial empowerment and become future leaders.

David Paul - Founding Director, Uventor Ltd.

David Paul is an experienced Open Innovation professional and Founder of Uventor, established to build strategic partnerships between start-ups & academics that have innovation with organisations that can benefit from it.

Previously David has a long career in the Automotive sector, and until end of 2019 was Innovation Director for Magna International, the largest Austomotive Tier 1 in North America. In this role David was responsible for identifying game changing technologies in the Cambridge ecosystem (and beyond) with an office on the University's west campus. 

David began his career with an Engineering Apprenticeship then studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Loughborough (sponsored by Jaguar Cars Ltd) and then became a core member of Jaguar’s power train design team. Upon leaving Jaguar in 1995, David joined Magna International’s Powertrain division and in 2007 set up his own Consultancy to support SME’s and Innovate UK in the low carbon vehicle sector, before rejoining Magna in 2014.