Dr Rosalind Hannen

Founder and CEO

Ros completed her BBSRC-Unilever PhD studentship in dermatoendocrinology at the Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) in 2009 and actively created all her subsequent postdoctoral research positions by personally writing and winning grant funding, pitching to businesses and engaging in all types of funding opportunities. She won the British Skin Foundation grant award in 2016 to further her research in psoriasis and was awarded a MedCity grant (2017, the highest ranked grant) with Fourth State Medicine to assess the effectiveness of plasma technology for chronic wound healing. In 2018 Ros won the MedTech SuperConnector and QMUL Life Sciences Initiative awards to accelerate the commercial development of her research; and most recently an Innovate UK Smart grant. Ros founded Keratify in December 2018 to advance laboratory human skin testing.

Rani Saad

Rani has built and invested in ventures for 25 years. He is an active deep-tech investor (with over 25 investments) and is co-founder and President of the Stanford Angels of the UK. With an MBA from Stanford and degrees in three engineering fields, Rani has a keen interest in market disruptive technology. Recently, Rani helped found and manage a Berlin-based VC fund. He previously co-founded or co-built four startups in Silicon Valley, London and elsewhere, in addition to an emerging markets VC fund. He also launched products globally and directed innovation acceleration at Microsoft, launched cutting-edge tech platforms at Capital One, and led venture formation at ideas42, a leading behavioural sciences entity.

Zuber Ahmed

Product Developer

Zuber is a multi-award-winning product developer with over 15 years of industrial product development experience. He began training at Dyson as a design engineer, where he conceptualised the bladeless fan. He moved to BAE Systems for 10 years, working on some of the world’s most advanced engineering projects and won eight awards in recognition of his talent. More recently, he set up the UK engineering design team as principal mechanical engineer at Dialight PLC, developing industrial safety lighting. He is highly experienced in end-to-end product development from rapid prototyping to manufacture. Since joining in April 2020 he has already significantly advanced the MVP fluidic control concepts.

Dr Rafa Castrejon Pita

Rafa is a lecturer at QMUL where he leads the Laboratory of Applied Sciences. He co-leads the EPSRC Special Interest Group “Droplet dynamics”. Rafa obtained his PhD from Imperial College (2007), attended the University of Cambridge as an Isaac Newton Trust Fellow, a Government Body Fellow of Wolfson College and Senior Research Associate. Ros and Rafa have cultivated an inspiring partnership since 2016, working to create useful technology to solve fundamental problems in skin culture. Rafa’s physics, engineering and fluidics skills perfectly complement Ros’s experience in dermatology and biochemistry. In addition to the current platform device, they are discussing new innovations in bioengineering to develop Keratify’s future portfolio.

Professor Mike Philpott

Mike has over 30 years of experience at the cutting edge of human skin models. In his D.Phil. he developed and patented an in vitro model of human hair follicle growth referred to as the ‘Philpott model’, which established his subsequent academic career. This model was of fundamental significance as it founded the field of hair biology and is still used in labs around the world to this day. He has worked with many national and international companies including Unilever, Pfizer, Procter and Gamble, Henkel, Church and Dwight, L’Oréal, Giuliani and consulted for over 20 companies from large Pharma to SME’s. He has extensive knowledge of skin models, technology transfer and public engagement including the Royal institution, natural History museum, TV, radio, and press.