Our people

Nathan is a Physics graduate with a Master’s degree focused on condensed matter physics, solid state physics, and quantum mechanics. At UCL Ventures, he supports the development and commercialisation of deep tech opportunities emerging from the UCL research base, with a particular focus on quantum technologies, machine learning, photonics, and robotics.

Nathan works with academic founders and project teams under taking early opportunity assessment, intellectual property protection, market research, customer discovery, market sizing, early financial modelling, and go to market strategy. He supports ventures in understanding their target markets, identifying potential customers and partners, assessing competitive positioning, and shaping the commercial narrative needed for investors, grant funders, and strategic collaborators. Read more about Nathan Callcott

Leader in strategic corporate communications and marketing for visitor attractions, conservation organisations and campaigning charities. Nigel joined UCL Ventures in 2023.

Nomsa previously worked for Searcys & Tansley as a Cash Controller, working on the purchase ledger, sales ledger, new club memberships and club membership renewals, banking, petty cash, and payroll. Week, month & Year end procedures. She joined us in 2021.

Beyond work, Nomsa is a Plant Parent, enjoying outdoor gardening in spring and summer, and indoor plant care in autumn and winter. Read more about Nomsa Mushambi

Nora spent 15 years managing events in the charity and non-profit sector before joining us in 2023. Her previous roles were with SSAFA The Armed Forces Charity, Girlguiding UK and the NHS. She also spent five years managing auctions at Christie’s Auctioneers.  

Nora has a BA in English Literature and Geography from the National University of Singapore and, in her spare time, she makes pottery at Maxability Charity. Read more about Nora Amin

Dr Spingardi joined UCL Ventures in 2022. He has previously worked in the industry partnerships and commercialisation team in the Imperial College London enterprise division and was a Fellow of the LifeArc Technology Transfer Programme.

Paolo has an MChem in chemistry and a DPhil in cancer metabolomics and epigenetics from the University of Oxford. In his research, he developed flux analysis systems to probe the nucleotide synthesis and salvage pathways in cancer. Read more about Dr. Paolo Spingardi

Paul Evans is a Business Manager at UCL Ventures, who joined in 2025, supporting the commercial development of technologies across engineering, computing and AI-enabled platforms. Paul has more than 20 years’ experience spanning semiconductors, enterprise SaaS and advanced software systems, and has held leadership roles in both global technology companies and early-stage ventures.

Paul was the founder and CEO of articulate.xyz, an AI-powered language technology platform, where he raised over £1M in equity funding, led product and commercial strategy, and grew the service to over 80,000 users with enterprise clients including HSBC. He oversaw the full governance lifecycle of the company, including investor relations, HR and compliance, and the subsequent managed wind-down of the business. Prior to founding articulate.xyz, Paul held senior roles at Imagination Technologies and at Altera (now part of Intel), where he focused on product development, ecosystem partnerships and multi-million-dollar business growth in the semiconductor sector.

Paul holds a first-class BEng in Digital Electronic Engineering from the University of Kent. Read more about Paul Evans

Professor Rees (FMedSci) is Vice-Provost (Research, Innovation & Global Engagement) and former Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences. Before that, from 2009-2014, he was Director of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and from 2011-2014 Deputy Head of the Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL.

Geraint is responsible for providing vision and academic leadership for UCL’s world-leading research, knowledge exchange and global engagement, and the functions, services and resources that support it.

His Wellcome Trust-funded research seeks to understand the neural basis of consciousness, and has resulted in over 200 research publications including sixteen empirical papers in Science or Nature journals. His work has been (ISI) cited over 9,400 times and he has an h-index of 50. His work has elucidated the importance of frontal and parietal cortex in determining the contents of consciousness; discovered the involvement of the lateral geniculate nucleus in conscious perception; discovered the importance of attentional load in determining neural activity associated with conscious and unconscious visual perception; characterised the pervasive role of unconscious processing in the ventral visual pathway; and elucidated the importance of inter-individual variability in brain structure and function in determining how people perceive their world.

Recently he has pioneered new approaches to analysing functional brain images to individuate the contents of consciousness, and has written and spoken on the potential moral and ethical implications of such techniques.

He is a non-executive Director of UCL Ventures, one of the UK’s most successful technology transfer companies, and was a Senior Scientific Advisor at DeepMind from 2018-2020. Read more about Professor Geraint Rees

Rachel is responsible for managing the intellectual property portfolio at UCL Ventures and provides advice and support on IP matters.

She has a BSc in Biology with a year in industry from the University of York and completed a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the University of Nottingham, which was awarded Business Impact Prize for the continuing transformational effect of a past KTP by Innovate UK.

Rachel has previously held roles as intellectual property manager at the University of East Anglia and as business development officer for intellectual property rights and commercialisation at Staffordshire University. She joined UCL Ventures in 2015. Read more about Rachel Clark

Renata joined us in 2006, with over 17 years of experience in various finance roles. She is a member of the Association of Accounting Technicians and a member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. Read more about Renata Tarnowska