Meet the Team
We are operators, scientists and founders
with a shared mission.
Ale
CEO at Wilbe. Former corporate solicitor in London focused on tech, medical devices and spinouts. Ale left practice in 2015 to advise founders of early stage tech companies. Supported over 40 founders, and in 2017 set up Wilbe Ventures, acting as interim COO to AI and Blockchain ventures on an equitable basis. He built an investor-backed portfolio and a stellar team and in 2019 together with Dee started building a new model for commercialising science at scale with Wilbe.com.
Guest lecturer within the Faculty of Engineering at Imperial College London. Academically specialised in environmental law, drafting policy including for COP15 in Copenhagen. He completed his LLB (Hons) from the University of Kent. A bowman when sailing, once injured his neck head-banging at a RATM tribute gig.
Thejas
Talent & Ventures Associate, Thejas received his PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison in cancer biology and carried out his post-doctoral studies at the Institute for Molecular Biotechnology at the Vienna Biocenter. Over the course of his scientific career, he has published in prestigious journals such as PNAS and Nature. He recently pivoted from making discoveries to talking discoveries with scientists. Before joining Wilbe, he worked with CEBINA, a biotech accelerator. Enjoys reading books on restructuring democracies and cooking fusion dishes.
Hakan
Academic Partner helping the team visualise the impact of the life sciences research that we wish to commercialise. Hakan brings his expertise as a life sciences and healthcare consultant and inside the lab as a senior molecular and cellular biologist at Imperial College London. He is also Founder of the Imperial Postdocs and Fellows Enterprise Network. Hakan’s research.
Alec
Originally from Colorado, Alec completed his PhD in the development of a bio-mimetic material to package therapeutics for targeted delivery. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford, he led a clinical project within the Institute of Biomedical Engineering. He has recently stepped into the entrepreneurial world at a London-based start-up in stealth.
Fabri
Advisor at Wilbe, Fab helps our Fellows sourcing, setting up and managing lab space. He is formerly Managing Director at Headspace Group, a co-working brand serving the tech, media and creative industries. Fab developed the business to acquisition, doubling the number of spaces under management and adding multinational corporations to the portfolio of clients. Cities served: London, Manchester, Birmingham, Southampton and Belfast. Voracious consumer of general knowledge and loves dedicating time to surfing, good food and health.
Devika
COO at Wilbe. Former head of new product development at IBM Watson in New York. Dee spent five years commercialising artificial intelligence solutions for large enterprises across USA and Europe in product, sales and chief of staff roles. Her interest in frontier technologies began whilst working with Yale's Tech Transfer Office on spinout evaluations during her MBA.
She started her career as a management consultant with Accenture India. An angel investor in early stage ventures. Dee serves on the Board of Collette, a world leading travel company. Professionally trained dancer now keeping up, she is on the Board of STEM from Dance aimed at empowering girls of colour to pursue STEM education through dance. A BA in economics from St. Stephen's College India.
Gautam
Academic Partner, Gautam is an evolutionary cell biologist heading his own research group at EMBL. The Dey Group is studying the evolutionary origins of nuclear organisation and architecture. He completed his postdoctoral research with Buzz Baum at the MRC Lab for Molecular Cell Biology at UCL and PhD from Stanford University’s Department of Chemical and Systems Biology, where he worked with Tobias Meyer on the evolution of human gene regulatory modules. Gautam's research.
Ruaridh
Academic Partner helping the team visualise the impact of material sciences research that we wish to commercialise. Ruaridh is a postdoctoral fellow in nuclear science and engineering at MIT, focusing his research on understanding how nuclear power and other technologies must adapt to succeed in modern energy systems and markets. Formerly co-founder of OpenWater Power, an AL-ion venture exited to L3 Technologies in 2017. Ruaridh's research.
Hannah
Course Director at Wilbe Skills, a PhD scientist by training, Hannah now has experience across product, business, operations and people functions at science start-ups including Healx, Sano Genetics, CCG.ai. Hannah is currently getting stuff done as Senior Product Manager at Healx, building software to find treatments for rare diseases. When she’s not building products, she’s helping talent unlock their potential or doing comedy gigs.
Nithin
Course Director at Wilbe Skills, Nithin is currently supporting venture building activities for Fellows working on climate issues in geographies beyond Europe. As an early stage deeptech angel, Nithin curates a portfolio of impactful investments in science-based founders tackling the world's largest, most complex problems. A seasoned operator in the Investment Banking, Energy and Medtech sectors, when Nithin is not with his family, he is a supporter of Charlton Athletic and hip-hop aficionado.
Why "Wilbe"
William Wilberforce
The man who has inspired the setting up of Wilbe, led the spirit with which we came together as a team and with which we choose the founders we back and the problems we tackle. Transparent, dynamic, relentless and generous.
