Chairman: Professor Jim McLaughlin

Professor of Advanced Functional Materials in the School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Director of the new Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials Research Institute, and Director of NIBEC.

Professor McLaughlin has attracted over 18M pounds of funding to establish research that has led to the establishment of NIBEC, NICAM and BEST. These centres now boast over seventy researchers carrying out both basic and applied research in topics such as nanotubes, DLC, micro-sensors, photocatalysis and tissue engineering.

He has formal collaborations with Cambridge, Surrey, Nanyang, IIT Bombay; North Carolina State University, the National University of Taiwan and various EU universities. Other past achievements include acting as a consultant to various aerospace programs on the design and fabrication of medical electrode harnesses and he is holder of fifteen patents including one for the world best selling disposable medical electrode.

Professor James McLaughlin obtained his BSc (Hons) degree in Applied Physics at the University of Ulster and later his PhD in the area of thin film deposition and characterisation applied to display technology. He was co-founder and leader of Thin Film Materials & Devices group.

Founder and Managing Director: Dr. Suzanne Roghieh Saffie-Siebert

Dr Saffie-Siebert is the founder of SiSaf Ltd. She has more than 12 years of top-management experience in the biotech industry plus several years experience in the healthcare sector.

Her start up company expertise includes general and operations management, intellectual property development, capital raising and investor relations.

Dr Saffie-Siebert's previous positions include Director of Research at pSiMedica Ltd (spin out from QinetiQ) and Head of the Drug Delivery Centre at Dompe SpA (Italy). In these positions, she managed successfully several contract R&D projects for biotech companies in Europe, the U.S., and Australia and negotiated a wide range of commercial agreements on a global basis. She also reviewed SME technologies for technical due diligence.

Dr Saffie-Siebert obtained her PhD in Drug Delivery field from the School of Pharmacy at the University of London. She is inventor or co-inventor of 8 drug delivery patents and is Visiting Professor at Ulster University.

Investor Director: Tim Brundle

Tim Brundle is Director of Innovation at the University of Ulster (Ulster). He is responsible for the University's commercial output including consultancy, knowledge transfer, intellectual property licensing, technology commercialisation and spin outs. In addition he has responsibility for UUTech Ltd, the University of Ulster's technology venturing company.

Prior to his appointment with Ulster, on behalf of QinetiQ Group PLC, he held the positions of both Director of Sales and Marketing and Technology Transfer Director within the Ministry of Defence Diversification Agency. He holds a number of non-Executive posts and is a Non Executive Director of Northern Ireland's economic development body, Invest NI.'

Senior Project Manager - Dr Nessim Troabi-pour

Dr Torabi-Pour has extensive experience in project management from discovery to clinical phases. Prior to joining SiSaf, he worked as Technical Project Manager at pSiMedica Ltd (spin out from QinetiQ) and as Project Director at Global Technologies (NZ) Ltd.

Dr Torabi-Pour has also considerable international research experience. At the Mayo Clinic, USA, and the Royal London Hospital he worked in the area of cancer and inflammatory diseases, and he researched solid and semi-solid drug delivery formulations at the University of London and at Leipzig University in Germany.

Dr Torabi-Pour obtained an MSc in Pharmaceutical Science from King's College, University of London, and a PhD from the School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of London. He is author of more than 30 scientific papers and inventor and co-inventor of 4 patents. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.