Hagan Bayley Named Entrepreneur of the Year

27th April 2009

Professor Hagan Bayley, founder of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, was named Entrepreneur of the Year by the Royal Society of Chemistry last week at the Industry and Technology Forum Awards. Professor Bayley is Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of Oxford.

Oxford University Innovation was instrumental in setting up the company with seed funding of £0.5 million in 2005.  Isis managed the business planning and the intellectual property aspects of creating the new business. Oxford Nanopore Technologies is developing the first single-molecule, label-free method of sequencing DNA. It has raised £24 million in the last year, expanding from 25 people to 60 scientists, engineers and informaticians.

“We would like to congratulate Professor Hagan Bayley on the award, which recognises the both his scientific and commercial achievements,” said Mr Tom Hockaday, managing director of Oxford University Innovation. “At Isis we have the privilege of working with an exceptional group of inventors and entrepreneurs, and we aim to provide the technology transfer expertise, funding through the University Challenge Seed Fund, and support for the next generation of Oxford spin-outs.”

Professor Hagan Bayley has researched nanopores for nearly 20 years at world-leading institutions that include Harvard, MIT, the University of Massachusetts and now the University of Oxford. He founded Oxford Nanopore to transform the accumulated knowledge of nanopores into a highly competitive technology for single molecule analysis. Nanopores may be used to identify single molecules of DNA, and also a broad range of other analytes that might include proteins, biological or chemical weapons, drugs of abuse and much more.

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