Our Team

Mark is a Chartered Accountant, a Chartered Director, qualified as a Corporate Treasurer and holds an MBA from Saïd Business School, Oxford University.  Mark’s experience includes regional CFO roles within listed companies (CTI Molecular Imaging, Siemens Healthcare) for business up to EUR 800m, CFO roles within venture-backed business, and General Management roles within medical imaging software development and radiopharmaceutical manufacture.

Mark has over 17 years  of experience in medical imaging including with www.mirada-medical.com, an oncology imaging company, and as a Non-Executive Director for www.cydarmedical.com, a surgical imaging spin-out from King’s College London. Mark is an inventor on 9 patents.

Sarah Small BSc, ACA is a Chartered Accountant with 15 years’ experience of leading financial functions for both UK and US listed entities and her previous role included Group Finance Director for a UK AIM listed company.

Sarah has worked across a various number of industry sectors including digital marketing, retail, entertainment, education and construction. Sarah has a mathematics degree from Warwick University.

Steve Wells spent 12 years developing medical devices for Siemens Molecular Imaging before joining Adaptix.

He has a PhD in Neuroscience, MSc in Medical Physics and a Natural Sciences degree from Cambridge.  Prior to Siemens he worked as a software engineer on various commercial science projects.

Dr Siân Phillips MB,BCh MRCP FRCR is an experienced Consultant Radiologist based in South Wales.
She gained her undergraduate and postgraduate medical training in Wales. She has held several leadership roles during her career, including Associate Dean and Head of School at Health Education
and Improvement Wales; chair of Medical Imaging Sub-Committee and Imaging Essential Services Group, advising Welsh Government; and Clinical Director. As part of her active involvement in teaching and training, she has been involved in developing undergraduate curricula, been an FRCR examiner at the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR), and was instrumental in establishing and developing the National Imaging Academy, Wales. As a Fellow of the Royal College of Radiologists, she plays an active role in RCR activity.
Siân has extensive experience with Digital Tomosynthesis imaging in the general clinical setting. Her service was the first clinical department in the UK, second in Europe to introduce this innovative
technology. Her experiences with digital tomosynthesis she has shared widely, presenting at international conferences worldwide. She has sat on the Medical Advisory Board of GE Healthcare and acted as Medical Advisor to Adaptix for several years.

Professor Keith Bowen FREng FRS is the former Chief Scientist for Bede Scientific and is an Emeritus Professor of Engineering at Warwick University.  He obtained his MA and DPhil in Metallurgy at Oxford University.  He was appointed Lecturer in Materials in the Department of Engineering, Warwick University in 1968 and held various academic positions, including Head of Department, Professor of Engineering, Chairman of the Graduate School for Science and Director of the Center for Nanotechnology and Microengineering. He has authored about 150 publications on the theory and application of X-ray characterization techniques, theory of dislocations, X-ray interferometry and ultra-precision engineering.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1997 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1998. Keith joined Bede Scientific Instruments Ltd. part-time in 1983 and served as Group Director of Technology of Bede plc from 2000 until his retirement from the Board in 2005, then Chief Scientist of Bede plc from 2006 – 2008.

Conrad Dirckx has a BA in Computer Science and PhD in MRI Imaging from Cambridge University as well as a master’s degree from the Ecole Centrale Paris in real-time computing.  He has worked for GE Healthcare in their workstation, vascular x-ray and MRI business units and prior to joining Adaptix, spent 11 years working for Siemens in their molecular imaging division leading development projects for cardiology, neurology and oncology software products.

He is an APMP certified project manager who helped to pioneer the transition to lean/agile software development within Siemens MI.

Dr Aquila Mavalankar (PhD Physics) is an Experimental Physicist specialising in the fabrication, evaluation, and electronic measurement of semiconductor nanostructures. Aquila has been awarded the prestigious Industry Fellowship by the Royal Society and has partnered with the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (STFC) to further develop Adaptix technology. Prior to joining Adaptix, Aquila was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford, where she worked on the fabrication and implementation of quantum logic circuits based on carbon-nanotube transistors.

Her specialisation in the area of semiconductor devices and electronic measurements began with her PhD completed from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. She is interested in mentorship and mentors in association with the Windsor Fellowship.

Hannah Lawrence-Lelitte (Assoc. CIPD) spent 10 years working  as a senior Administrator for the University of Oxford and in HR and training roles across industries including publishing, environmental management and motorsport.

Hannah’s background is in Organisational Pyschology and she has a BSc in Psychology from the University of Surrey.

Kate Blanshard has a degree in Modern History from the University of Oxford and briefly worked in publishing before gaining an LLB Hons (First Class) from the College of Law, Chester and London. Kate completed her professional training as a solicitor at a City law firm.

Before joining Adaptix, Kate helped establish the new MSc in Law and Finance degree at the University of Oxford, run jointly by the Faculty of Law and Saïd Business School.

Sami Mughal has a degree in Electronics Engineering. He has worked in the UV, printing and electrical supplying industry. His experience spans hardware design and software for High Voltage devices, as well as life cycle management of various projects.

He has been involved in taking many projects from concept to production, including specifications, design, prototyping, testing and facilitating production.

Silvia Sottini is an Experimental Physicist. Her work focuses on the characterization of the x-rays emitter sources developed at Adaptix.  Before joining Adaptix, Silvia worked mainly in academia in Italy and The Netherlands where she studied the electronic, structural and functional properties in the active sites of metalloenzymes and bio-mimetic model compounds by Electron Paramagnetic resonance.

Silvia earned a laurea in Physics (master’s degree) from the University of Florence and a doctorate in Physics from the University of Parma.

Manuel has a master’s degree in physics from the University of Kassel in Germany.

After finishing his masters thesis in collaboration with the Physics Institute at the University of Heidelberg, he started working as a PhD student at the BESSY synchrotron ring of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin.  This involved working in a small team to develop and commission an experimental chamber for automatized coherent X-ray imaging, which enabled him to gain a broad experience of building and operating complex experimental setups.

Martin Holden graduated from Glasgow School of Art with a BEng in product design and engineering, and from Cambridge University with a Master’s Degree in design, manufacturing and management.

His experience includes mechanical design, design for electronics, high voltage and design for MEMS devices.

Steve joined Adaptix at the start of 2019 as a Mechanical Engineer in the R&D team.  Steve has 30 years’ experience in engineering, which most recently involved a focus on procurement of engineering hardware and services. Previously, Steve worked in precision tooling production and design in the beverage can industry and in the modelling of material usage to enable better raw material efficiency.

His earlier career also included cryogenics, superconducting magnets and medical engineering. Steve has a degree in engineering from Oxford Brookes.

Jessica is responsible for developing and documenting electrical/electronic systems and assisting with the build and development of prototype units. Jessica has a wealth of R&D knowledge from a career spent working in regulated environments, including considerable experience in the Medical Device industry.

Jessica’s experience includes writing procedures for ISO9001 compliance and repair and maintenance of medical devices in an ISO13485 environment.

Paul Betteridge is a software development professional with nearly 30 years of commercial experience. He has a degree in chemistry from Oxford University, which was followed by post-graduate work in X-ray crystallography and molecular modelling. Paul has worked in companies of all sizes from start-ups to multinationals.

Before Adaptx, he worked for Secerno, an Oxford database security start-up, where he was responsible for the whole development team that created a security appliance device encapsulating a novel approach which was translated from an academic idea to a commercial product. Secerno was sold to Oracle in 2010, and Paul managed the integration of its product into the Oracle database security portfolio.

Vadim Soloviev is a computational physicist specialised in inverse problems. He has a PhD in Applied Mathematics and an MSc in Physics. Vadim’s areas of expertise include tomography, radiative transfer equation, photonics, magnetohydrodynamics, statistics and uncertainty analysis. Vadim participated in the development of novel imaging technologies for biomedical imaging at University College London and University of Pennsylvania.

Prior to joining Adaptix, Vadim held roles at Culham Center for Fusion Energy and Emerson Roxar.

Michal is a Software Engineer with a master’s degree in Mathematical Modelling. His main area of expertise is C++ development and he has been involved in projects ranging from computer graphics, IoT and network programming, to implementation of mathematical models.

Before joining Adaptix, he was developing software for satellite integration test systems.

Jack Ashby graduated from the University of Kent with an MPhys in Physics.  During his Master’s he created a simulation of a SPECT/CT scanner using GATE software, collaborating with an NHS hospital to investigate dose sensitivity measurements and quantification error calibration.

Jack also gained experimental experience from developing a single-pixel camera imaging system, in addition to experience with NEMO collaborators analysing neutrino detector components.

Sophie is currently studying for her ACCA qualifications and her role at Adaptix enables her to gain exposure to a wide range of financial and commercial activities.

Sophie’s love of Maths and Business at school led to her interest in pursuing a career in Finance and she is working towards Chartered Accountant qualification.

Jamie Cameron graduated from Lancaster University with an MPhys in Physics. During his Master’s he developed a low-noise electronic measurement platform.

Jamie obtained international experience during a research placement at DESY, a world-leading institute for high energy particle physics and photon science. DESY has various particle accelerators and laser facilities, as well PETRA III, one of the best storage ring based X-ray sources in the world. While at DESY, Jamie helped to test and calibrate the detector modules for the upcoming upgrade of the CMS experiment at CERN.

Isabel Gomes is an experimental physicist with expertise in nanomaterials fabrication and characterisation.  Her PhD focused on colossal magnetoresistive thin films deposited by pulsed laser ablation on piezoelectric crystals.  Isabel also completed a postdoc on magnetocaloric and magnetoelectric thin films and multilayers.

Before joining Adaptix Isabel worked in the field of thin film solid state batteries.

Nivedita Yumnam (PhD Physics) is an experimental physicist with specialisation in fabrication and metrology of nanostructures and organic electronic devices. She completed her PhD at Jacobs University Bremen, where she focused on self-assembled monolayer-controlled growth of ZnO nanostructures for organic solar cells and charge carrier transport in bulk heterojunction semiconductor systems.

She worked with Evonik Industries, where she did fabrication and bias stress characterisation of thin-film transistors under different environmental conditions.

Kate graduated from the University of Warwick in 2019  with a 1st in physics (MPhys). Her masters project focused on the electron microscopy of ternary oxide nanomaterials, where she used a range of microscopy techniques to characterise a Zn2GeO4 nanowire sample provided by Complutense University of Madrid. Kate also had experience working on a computational project at the University of Durham, looking at recursion in the band structure of 2D lattices in extreme magnetic fields.

Kate joined as an imaging intern at Adaptix, taking experimental data and reconstructing tomosynthesis slices for a variety of biological and technical samples and has since been accepted the role of Imaging Scientist.

Jo Durrant spent 7 years in a healthcare charity in their research and evaluation team; working on service evaluation, quality improvement and information production.

Jo’s background is in Psychology and she has a BSc in Psychology from the University of Southampton.

Eleanor Fitzgerald holds a BA in Chemistry from Trinity College, Oxford, and during her studies she developed a keen interest in solid state chemistry. She joined the Adaptix team in January 2021; before this they worked in a variety of sectors including education, clinical microbiology, and battery technology. Eleanor is also a published novelist and poet.

Eleanor is a Non-Binary Transgender Woman and uses she/they pronouns. Photo courtesy of Fiona Cue Photography

Andy graduated with an Engineering Masters and boxing Blue from Oxford University, then gained Chartered Engineer status as a project manager while working for the Ministry of Defence. On the MOD Fast Stream, Andy gained corporate and leadership experience in a variety of strategic roles as well as leading counter terrorism teams in Iraq. Andy was awarded the Iraq medal and formally commended for changing the Coalition Forces campaign strategy.

Andy then went into leadership consulting & coaching (clients now diplomats & in No.10) and also moved into the commercial sector founding a film & TV company, raising finance and building relationships with the major studios. While he got the companies up and running Andy secured acting roles in Coronation Street and Emmerdale to help pay the bills.

Linde graduated from King’s College London with an MSci in Physics in 2014, and went on to do an MRes in Nanomaterials at Imperial College London.

Before joining Adaptix in 2021, she gained experience in a range of disciplines, including mathematical modelling, scientific R&D for high power laser devices, and software development.

Sam obtained his MMath from Oxford in 2016, with a particular interest in Number Theory and Algebraic Geometry. He started programming in Visual Basic for a summer job in 2008, and since then has made his way through several languages including Haskell, Java, Matlab, and python. In 2018 he took his first role as a C++ developer, and now considers modern C++ to be his main language of choice. He has worked in a range of domains including aerospace engineering, cybersecurity, and music production software.

Daniel has a Diploma in Electronics Engineering from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) in Brazil, and studied ICT for Smart Societies (MSc.) at the Polytechnic University of Turin (Politecnico di Torino) in Italy.

Before joining Adaptix, he worked several years as an R&D engineer/designer developing electronic circuits applied to home appliances and home automation, gained some experience in the field of microelectronics for positioning chips/GPS, and developed projects involving machine learning and optimisation algorithms.

Tonia Stengelin joined Adaptix as Grants Manager in September 2021. She also works part time for Oxford nanoSystems as grant manager. With a MSc in Physics, and further Fine Arts and Communications training, she has previously worked for the Stanford Medical School in Palo Alto (CA).

Aoife is currently studying for her AAT accounting qualification alongside her role at Adaptix. She previously worked as an Administrator in the Radiology Department at the Manor Hospital in Oxford.

Martin Stofanko has a PhD in Immunology and MSc in Applied Genetics from University of Birmingham. Following Postdoctoral work at University of Cambridge he moved into industry in Brazil developing genetic tests for their low budget public healthcare system.

 He is experienced in defining, executing and writing up quality assurance and technical documentations for IVDs and up to class IIa sterile MDs in the UK, Brazil and Germany. He has lead validation, external testing and transfer to manufacturing activities within company and outsourced abroad. He has established and extended ISO 13485 QMS from D&D to manufacturing, sales and distribution.