Cybercrime costs the global economy an estimated half a trillion dollars a year in economic losses, ransom payments and dealing with the resulting chaos, writes Arm CEO, Simon Segars. 

But while the advantages of a fully-connected world vastly outweigh the threats, achieving a digital world anchored in security needs all companies to accept their share of the responsibility to create a foundation of trust. 

In effect, all companies need to sign up to the Digital Social Contract (Social Contract) that obliges them to protect users.

Social Contract adherence will require companies to go well beyond the legal language in their terms and conditions and regard robust security as a prerequisite in all design decisions. 

It will mean them taking full account of how people are likely to use their technology, not how they’d like them to use it. While the contract also places a duty of care on users to protect themselves by behaving responsibly, technology designers will always carry the major burden as we are the experts. 

It will require a swift departure from the mindset in which companies ship products with device passwords as simple as 12345 or PASSWORD and consider that acceptable. 

The subject of IoT security is fundamental to the Internet of Thing’s development. The Economist survey on commercial IoT adoption co-sponsored by us and IBM last year showed investment was continuing and many sectors were already in early scale deployment. But despite progress the IoT is still immature and trust is being built. If, as technology industry companies, we consider ourselves architects of the connected device world, then we must also consider ourselves as architects of trust. 

This means treating the currency of the IoT – data, connectivity and control – as carefully as a national bank treats its currency. This is the focus of the Security Manifesto we have published at Arm TechCon in Santa Clara. 

We discuss how the technology industry can meet its Social Contract obligations and protect products over their design lifetime. The Manifesto authors assess the evolving threat and describe some of the advanced security features and directions Arm and others are considering. 

We examine new silicon chip architectural paths that compartmentalise the central brain, the CPU, making it harder for an attack to spread. Also, we explore how the industry can use artificial intelligence running on devices rather than in the cloud to look for irregularities and learn the unique patterns of device users to improve security and authentication. 

Another interesting concept is based on the creation of a network-wide immune system and health service. The idea, based on human biology, may only be 3-5 years from first rollout and it would see artificial intelligence used to assess and then target attacks. 

The system, like human white blood cells, would attack infections by reflex, and quarantine devices to ensure the wider network could continue operating. 

If the immune system failed to cope, there would be an option to bring in more intensive health care services to rehabilitate devices or take them offline permanently. 

With cybercrime costing the world $500 billion a year, more than the individual GDP of all but nine countries, we must act – expecting the unexpected and launching counterattacks before we have been attacked. 

It is tomorrow’s issue but it must be tackled creatively today, and success can lead to a world where hackers are put out of business. 

Cambridge superchip company Arm has joined forces with global technology giants including Google and Cisco to create a ‘Fort Knox-style’ IoT security platform to protect a trillion connected devices from potential cyber hackers.

The ‘device to cloud’ Platform Security Architecture (PSA) from Arm is the first common industry framework for building secure connected devices.

Paul Williamson, Arm vice-president and general manager for IoT Device IP, issued the rallying cry to the battallon of tech warriors in the frontline of the security war: “Devices must be born secure; security is no longer optional.”

The gauntlet was originally thrown down at Arm’s TechCon a year ago by parent company SoftBank’s chairman Masayoshi Son as he announced his vision for a trillion connected devices by 2035. 

Now, ahead of Arm’s TechCon 2017 (October 24-26) in California, the company has unveiled what it is doing in practical terms to deliver on the challenge. The upshot, says Williamson, is exciting and game-changing for the entire IoT industry. “It’s here: A common industry framework for protecting a trillion connected devices – PSA.”

Williamson said: “Achieving Masayoshi Son’s vision will require that we, the global population, become more knowledgeable in protecting our devices, while trusting the technology industry is doing everything it can to protect them and our data. 

“No easy task as this trust will need to be earned while battling hackers who relentlessly seek vulnerabilities to find more entry points into our lives.

“This means that security cannot be an afterthought across all parts of the value chain from device to cloud. Particularly for the Arm ecosystem which expects to have shipped 200 billion Arm-based chips by 2021 (100bn+ to date and another 100bn by 2021). 

“200bn chips is an astonishing number when you consider it’s nearly 2x the number of people (108bn) who have ever lived on earth. It also highlights the responsibility of Arm and our ecosystem to ensure these increasingly diverse connected devices that communicate with each other are designed with a common secure foundation.

“To address this, Arm is announcing the introduction of the first common industry framework for building secure connected devices, called Platform Security Architecture (PSA). Many of the biggest names in the industry are already endorsing and/or supporting PSA and the principles it’s based on.”

Williamson said the growing number of devices being connected to the internet need to be secure without sacrificing the very diversity which make them innovative and unique. 

“Arm chief system architect Andy Rose and his team made sure this was top of mind when developing PSA through analysis of devices and best practices for securing them,” he said.

With this in mind, PSA delivers:-

• Representative IoT threat models and security analyses
• Hardware and firmware architecture specifications, built on key security principles, defining a best practice approach for designing endpoint devices
• A reference open source implementation of the firmware specification, called Trusted Firmware-M

Williamson said: PSA is a fundamental shift in the economics of IoT security, enabling ecosystems to build on a common set of ground rules to reduce the cost, time and risk associated with IoT security today.

“To allow the IoT ecosystem to more rapidly realise the benefits of PSA we will deliver an open source reference implementation firmware conforming to the PSA specification. 

“Development initially targets Armv8-M systems, with source code release expected in early 2018. PSA is OS agnostic and is capable of being supported by all of Arm’s RTOS and software vendor partners, including the latest version of Arm’s market-proven Arm Mbed OS. 

“As part of our continued drive to provide partners with the tools to build secure IoT solutions, we are also announcing new additions to our portfolio of security IP.”

These are as follows:-

• Arm TrustZone CryptoIsland – A new family of highly integrated security subsystems providing on-die, smartcard-level security starting with CryptoIsland-300 which targets applications requiring high levels of isolation and security, such as LPWA communication, storage, and automotive.
• Arm CoreSight SDC-600 Secure Debug Channel – Evolving IoT use cases results in more devices requiring device lifecycle debug access. SDC-600 enables full debug capabilities without compromising system security, integrating a dedicated authentication mechanism for debug access.

Williamson added: “PSA addresses one part of the value chain and at Arm TechCon, Dipesh Patel, president of Arm’s IoT Services Group, will provide an update on Arm’s plans for securely connecting and managing IoT devices.

“Arm is moving fast and enabling our lead partners to thoroughly test and refine the PSA framework in advance of the public release of specifications and software in Q1 2018. But Arm, our ecosystem and the industry need to move faster. 

“All parts of the value chain need to embrace the guiding principle that security can no longer be optional. Our investment in PSA and Trusted Firmware-M represents much of the heavy lifting and lays out a clear and fast path to a common foundation for IoT security. No device should be left behind.”

Three Cambridge graduates pioneering digital genome editing technology are looking to break China – the world’s largest market in the arena – with what it believes is a game-changing personalised medicines proposition.

Desktop Genetics (DTG) is working with blue chip pharma companies in the US and has a distribution agreement in Japan but China is the holy grail for its growing suite of CRISPR libraries, says CEO Riley Doyle.

DTG today unveiled a new suite of six synergistic products designed to accelerate a medical revolution for biologists working with CRISPR genome editing technology.

CRISPR is a family of DNA sequences in bacteria that contains snippets of DNA from viruses that have attacked the bacterium. These snippets are used by the bacterium to detect and destroy DNA from further attacks by similar viruses. These sequences play a key role in a bacterial defence system and form the basis of a genome editing technology known as CRISPR/Cas9 that allows permanent modification of genes within organisms.

At the time of writing, DTG had raised in rapid time £781k – 52 per cent of a £1.5 million target – on Cambridge equity crowdfunding platform SyndicateRoom. Cambridge serial entrepreneur and DTG investor Jonathan Milner is lead backer.

Doyle told Business Weekly that the £1.5m would take DTG to profitability by 2019. Rather than grabbing at every new shiny but unproven opportunity that might present itself on its journey, DTG would focus on building a viable, robust and sustainable business first and foremost.

“What happens further down the road – IPO or sale of the company – is not up to me. Companies aren’t sold – they are bought. Shiny entrepreneurial opportunities can pop up at any time but we have to remain focused and commercial and develop a company built to last.”

DTG’s current push for international expansion is predicated on the swift progress of CRISPR technology which has gone from proof of concept in around 2014-15 to a demonstrable commercial breakthrough.

Doyle believes it provides the roadmap to genuinely personalised medicines where different drugs can be tailored to the individual make-up of every patient on the planet.

DTG’s new series consists of six new base CRISPR library products which can be tailored to an investigator’s list of genomic targets using any delivery method. Each product addresses a particular experimental application of the genome editing technology. The Disrupt Libraries offering can be used to functionally knock out genes to reveal novel druggable targets and essential pathways.

DTG’s Tile Libraries saturate coding and non-coding regions to reveal genotype-phenotype relationships.

SNP-In Libraries allow high-throughput insertion and deletion knockins across the genome; Interfere Libraries silence target gene expression with CRISPRi while  Activate Libraries allow over-expression of target genes with CRISPRa.

Finally, DTG’s Predict Libraries provide a unique scoring algorithm optimised for teams working on specific model cell lines or organisms, enabling other libraries to be designed more effectively.

Once DTG receives a customer’s list of targets along with their experimental intent, the company designs the library using its proprietary DESKGEN AI and suite of bioinformatics pipelines. 

The validated technology employs machine learning techniques combined with the largest database of experimental CRISPR outcomes in the industry to select the guides most appropriate for the chosen targets and experiment. Once the designs are complete, the company manufactures the library in a variety of ready-to-use formats. 

Doyle says that, unlike off-the-shelf CRISPR libraries, DESKGEN Libraries allow researchers to look at the targets they’re interested in, opening the door to novel discovery. 

By meeting the client’s requirements with a bespoke CRISPR library, designed with the latest know-how in genome editing, these new products provide researchers with fewer false positives and negatives and the confidence needed to support claims made in basic and preclinical research. The company supports both large and small-scale library development and can meet the needs of both functional genomics and drug discovery laboratories regardless of budget.

Doyle said: “This is the first time that such best-in-class CRISPR libraries have been made available in a fully customisable manner and, as such, researchers neither have to waste time designing libraries themselves, nor take a risk that the data generated from an off-the-shelf alternative will yield redundant, obsolete or incorrect data that might jeopardise or stall follow-up research programs. 

“As we’re committed to maintaining the supremacy of the DESKGEN AI design platform, we will continue to deliver more and more solutions that enable novel discovery in all fields using CRISPR, whether it’s drug discovery, agricultural biotech, or fundamental research.” 

Doyle says DTG has achieved high growth since startup in 2012 to target a genome engineering market estimated to be worth around $2.84 billion globally and set to grow to more than $6bn by 2021. By that time it is estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 labs will be using CRISPR technology.

“Despite this, over half of all new medicines in development today are likely to never reach patients – often because they are based on flawed science,” says Doyle. He believes CRISPR will do for drug development and delivery what AI is promising today across a raft of high technology segments.

Anchored off Brick Lane in London’s entrepreneurial heartland of Shoreditch, DTG also has a commercial headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts – a city which represents the heart and lungs of the CRISPR ecosystem – and Doyle says the bulk of business is currently being generated with US customers.

As well as collaborating with Big Pharma corporates, DTG also works with leading academic institutions, hospital research and general medical research organisations globally.

Doyle says: “While the bulk of our customers are in the US we have a distribution agreement in Japan and we can do a lot more business in the European market. There is huge untapped potential in China, the world’s biggest market for our technology, with the government there committed to investing large amounts of money in new healthcare solutions.

“Regulatory wise it is also arguably the most difficult market to negotiate successfully but it is very much on our radar and is well worth the effort.”

Doyle revealed that DTG had recently been on the cusp of a $7m round to fund expansion on a much grander scale in terms of tech and territories; even that was modest compared to recent deals by major players in the sector that have topped as much as $76m.

For a variety of reasons the $7m investment didn’t make it over the line and DTG decided on a more modest short-to-medium term strategy with the crowdfunding raise driving it to profitability. 

The need to raise additional growth capital is under constant review but, as Doyle observes: “The cool thing about us is that we are a virtual biotech and the £1.5m crowdfunding cash will go towards our commercial growth rather than being spent on a large rent at a Cambridge science park.

“Our business model makes us more agile and we are utterly committed to being extremely efficient in everything we do.”

Being a digital biotech also enables DTG to operate a discerning employment strategy, hiring the best talent rather than going for volume; for example, it has had several interns working with management over the summer as part of a full team of just 16 including the three co-founders who are the senior executives. DTG hires interns on a rolling basis and recruits from around the world.

Doyle explains: “The interns have the best ideas. They come in with so much energy and enthusiasm and inspire the whole team.”

Heads may change but the core strategy for future scale-up remains rooted in pragmatism. DTG will not be seduced into chasing scattergun opportunities – what Doyle calls the ‘flavour of the week phenomenon.’ “We are concentrating on technology that solves a real problem.”

One edge that DTG enjoys is that it is dealing in the here and now. It is unencumbered by historic attempts to target a certain disease with an experimental drug that may have started development 15 years ago when circumstances were different and knowledge comparatively limited.
 
Such legacy plays can flop on day three when they finally reach clinical trials and are rendered past their relevance as diseases and lifestyle choices have moved on.

As Doyle observes, everyone on the planet has a different genetic make-up and only by gathering as much genetic data on as many people in the world as possible will drug delivery provide effective cures for individuals with specific problems.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Riley Doyle

Huawei’s UK research centre at Cambridge Science Park was today basking in the reflected glory of the Chinese giant’s launch of the AI-driven Mate 10 Series mobile device.

The company insists the product is so revolutionary that it is much more than a smartphone.
Huawai has grown like Topsy locally since acquiring Neul to provide an entry into the Cambridge UK technology cluster but was unavailable at the time of writing to discuss any input to Mate 10 by its Cambridge team.
Launching the series in Munich today, Huawei said the technology would open the door to new AI mobile applications. 
It said the device combined innovative hardware, the Kirin 970 chipset and EMUI 8.0, enjoyed  supremely long-lasting battery life while integrating New Leica Dual Camera technology.

Richard Yu, CEO of the company’s Consumer Business Group. said: “As we enter the age of intelligence, AI is no longer a virtual concept but something that intertwines with our daily life. 
“AI can enhance user experience, provide valuable services and improve product performanc. The HUAWEI Mate 10 Series introduces the first mobile AI-specific Neural Network Processing Unit, launching a new era of intelligent smartphones.”

Already looking to outsell Apple inside two years, the Chinese corporation said the Mate 10 Series supports super-fast LTE connectivity and download speeds. The device comes with the world’s first dual 4G SIM support and dual VoLTE connections, it added.
The device will be available from late October in more than 15 countries and regions including Spain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia. That reach will stretch by mid-November to more than two dozen countries, including Germany, France, Italy, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. 

Tests on a groundbreaking new autonomous bus system have started in Cambridge which could provide up to 100 additional journeys every day.

RDM Group is utilising its existing driverless PodZero to complete feasibility studies ahead of the potential deployment of a number of 10-seater autonomous buses that will run between Trumpington Park and Ride and Cambridge Station, via the strategically important Cambridge Biomedical Campus (Addenbrooke’s) site.

Funded by Innovate UK, the £250,000 project is being delivered in partnership with Connecting Cambridgeshire and the Smart Cambridge Programme and is designed to provide a vital solution to one of the area’s transport issues.

If successful, it will pave the way for an autonomous bus service that will run after 8pm on the evening and during the weekends, filling the current void for late night workers, revellers and weekend shoppers.

The project is also exploring the feasibility of an autonomous service between Whittlesford Parkway station and the Wellcome Genome Campus.

“The Trumpington to Cambridge Guided Busway represents an ideal route for the implementation of autonomous vehicles to meet real passenger demand,” explained Richard Fairchild, director of Autonomous Mobility Programmes at Coventry-based RDM Group.

“It is segregated from the highway allowing the pods to whizz up and down without traffic congestion slowing them down and also segregated from pedestrians and cyclists meaning it is a really safe route.

“Research has shown that there is demand for hundreds of journeys in the hours when the buses do not run. This is simply due to the cost and the pods can offer a solution that is cheaper to run – this is not replacing the existing service, just complementing it with a practical and effective solution during quieter times of the day.

“The technology in the PodZero is ideal for replicating the conditions an autonomous bus will run under and, the fact it could be quickly deployed, means we can deliver the data, information and experience required to get the fleet of larger, 10-seater autonomous buses on the busway a reality sooner rather than later.”

RDM Group, which has recently announced offices in Australia and the US, will design and manufacture a larger version of its four passenger self-driving pods to suit the location and customer needs, with the ‘autonomous buses’ able to accommodate wheelchairs, mobility scooters and bicycles.

The company will also look at developing vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communications to enable platooning of shuttles along the guided busway, as well as handling real time video feeds for safety, security and management of vehicles.

The feasibility study will deliver its findings in June next year and a £5 million project to bring a fleet of 10 seater buses will begin soon afterwards.

Planning to buy or sell a business? There’s a little-known insurance policy designed to protect your interests, says S-Tech’s Shaun Walker.

According to the Institute for Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances, a huge 18,013 mergers took place in Europe during 2016. 

The total value of these transactions exceeded €1001 billion, the largest of which was UK-based Vodafone AirTouch plc’s €204.79bn takeover of Germany’s Mannesmann AG.

Of course, the scale of this particular acquisition is extreme, but M & A activity of all sizes involves a variety of factors and inherent risks – whichever side of the transaction you’re on. 

While you may thoroughly research the company you’re buying, have a solid share purchase agreement (SPA) and run due diligence checks, there will be warranties to satisfy. And this may be further complicated in cases where the buyer and seller are in different countries and are therefore subject to different legislation. It may be difficult, unreliable or expensive to enforce the SPA indemnities across borders.

If you’re planning to strengthen your position, diversify your business or build a customer-base in a new geographical location, you’re likely to be considering your acquisition options. And although you’re sure you won’t be caught out, because you’ve conducted all of the relevant due diligence and have a watertight SPA, you should still consider taking out specialist M&A insurance.

This niche cover is becoming increasingly popular and can provide protection for both sides of the transaction. The insurance is sophisticated and tailored to each individual case, with specialist underwriters, corporate and tax law professionals working to provide cover. This allows bespoke solutions to be provided within the tight timescales of an M & A transaction.

M & A insurances typically consist of warranty and indemnity insurance that cover both unknown liabilities and tax liability insurance, which includes identified tax risks. 

It can be arranged for mergers of all sizes and limits are normally set as a percentage of the total value of indemnities. It can protect buyers against fraud by the seller too, up to the value of the entire purchase price, and can be accessed in the same jurisdiction as the policyholder.

For instance, your SPA might provide warranties for typically two, three, or in the case of tax, seven years. However, if something goes wrong, insurance could help recover any costs – for example, if the shareholder due to pay indemnities hasn’t put funds aside to cover these costs.
 
However, you could claim on an M & A policy if one was in place, even if the seller was in a different jurisdiction. 

And if you think about it from the seller’s perspective, it also provides them with peace of mind because they can get on and spend the proceeds of the business sale.

• At S-Tech, we’ve arranged M & A insurance with specialist underwriters for many years, working with a wide variety of businesses. To discuss how the cover works and could protect your next acquisition, don’t hesitate to contact me on 01223 445415.

The increasing internationalisation of East Anglian law firms, barristers’ chambers and patent and TM attorneys  is highlighted by the new Legal 500 Guide – the profession’s ‘bible’ – published online from today.

The make-up of the major legal practices in the region reflects the global nature of the current landscape as overseas businesses increasingly scale-up existing operations in the area or buy into it through acquisition.

The Legal 500 Guide highlights the top legal firms, the premier lawyers and the highly rated next generation practitioners in its most comprehensive review of the region to date.

Mills & Reeve – a genuinely international law firm and most independent observers’ choice as the leading practice locally – has most number ones in terms of sector rankings and leading individuals for East Anglia.

Birketts, which is growing fast across the region and has an additional office to Mills & Reeve in East Anglia via its Ipswich offering, is breathing down its rival’s neck in terms of number one placings for different areas of the law, and the number of leading individuals rated by The Legal 500 guide.

For individual areas of the law, Mills and Reeve claims 30 top spots – either stand-alone or with others – in East Anglia, just shading Birketts on 29.

Only one other firm – Taylor Vinters with 10 top spots – reaches double figures while Eversheds Sutherland (International) has nine, Ashtons Legal and Howes Percival eight each, Greenwoods and Hewitsons seven apiece and Buckles four.

Leading individuals across various disciplines covered by the guide this year include tips for the top, under the banner of next generation lawyers.
Mills & Reeve and Birketts together claim more than half of the 203 leading individuals with 104 between them – Mills & Reeve with 56 and Birketts 48.
 
Ashtons Legal has the next highest number of leading individuals with 20, then come Hewitsons with 18, Taylor Vinters on 16, Howes Percival and Eversheds Sutherland with 13 apiece, Buckles on eight and Greenwoods seven.

East Anglia also boasts the joint No.1 barristers’ chambers in the South East – Fenners – which is also the top Cambridge set in its own right.

And a record number of patent and trademark attorney firms are now operating in the innovation capital of Cambridge. Marks & Clerk, JA Kemp and Mathys are among the top rated firms in the 2017 guide.

Regarding the law firm ratings, The Legal 500 reports: “East Anglia’s regional economy is highly diverse, having a strong agricultural industry and a thriving community of SMEs and owner-managed businesses alongside the burgeoning technology cluster around Cambridge University. It is also home to a large number of high-net-worth individuals.

“In the wake of the EU referendum, commercial activity paused briefly, then came back strongly. Law firms have, therefore, been busy with company sales and commercial property work, as well as advising clients on the potential impact of Brexit, which could have a particularly strong impact on the agricultural sector, thanks to its reliance on European subsidies.

“The trend among the region’s firms towards expansion on a regional, national or international basis continues. Eversheds Sutherland (International), which has two offices in the region, combined with a US firm in 2017, further strengthening its international offering.

“Taylor Vinters has a flow of work through its Singapore office and now has a clear focus on a client base of innovative and entrepreneurial companies and individuals across a wide range of industry sectors. 

“Mills & Reeve continues to target the best of regional work alongside a growing portfolio of national and international matters. Ashtons Legal and Birketts have a strong regional offering across their office networks and both have key practice areas that handle work from across the UK and, in a growing number of cases, overseas.

“Buckles Solicitors in Peterborough now has an international connection through its close alliance with CastaldiPartners, which has offices in Milan and Paris.

“In other developments, Howes Percival’s young office in Cambridge is quickly expanding to become a stronger force in the market.
 
“Greenwoods Solicitors continues to expand its team in both Peterborough and Cambridge. Hewitsons is a stalwart of the Cambridge market and in several practice areas remains a leading light in the region.

“Bircham Dyson Bell bought the office that previously belonged to King & Wood Mallesons, marking its entry into the Cambridge market.”

• The October 12 issue of Business Weekly – in shops and on executives’ desks in the next couple of days – features a 32-page supplement on the guide’s findings and under-the-hood profiles of leading firms. The Law Lords supplement is also being published in digital format on our website, Epaper section.

In the meantime, for a full review of all The Legal 500’s sectoral rankings, leading individuals and in-depth analysis on different aspects of the law for East Anglia and the rest of the UK, visit legal500.com

A Spanish genomics technology startup has established a presence in Cambridge and is seeking to raise £2 million as a springboard to international growth.

Lifebit has created what it believes to be “the world’s first intelligent genomic platform” for biodata analysis.

Cambridge entrepreneur Professor Alan Barrell has become a director and chairman of the ambitious ‘Software as a Service’ enterprise.

Co-founders Maria Chatzou, the CEO, and Pablo Prieto, who is CSO and CTO, have already relocated to Cambridge. Both PhDs in Bioinformatics, they have had years of experience in the world-renowned Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona.

Still only a few months old Lifebit has already received a Techstars Award of €120K and a place in the Techstars London Accelerator. Lifebit’s target customers are blue chip companies across the pharmaceutical, biotech, healthcare, crop science, biofuels, animal health, cosmetics and food sectors.

The new money to be raised will be used to establish Lifebit as a recognised Software as a Service provider and build the team to enable rapid international expansion. 

Chatzou says that currently over 100 major companies and research institutions worldwide and four of the world’s top 10 Big Pharma enterprises – including Roche, Gentech, and Unilever – are using the open source language that Lifebit created. They present just the first group of intended target customers.

The founders have been instrumental in taking Cambridge to Barcelona. Before founding Lifebit they worked with Marek Tyl and Cambridge-based founders of The Innovation Forum and successfully set up Innovation Forum Barcelona.

They decided that Cambridge was the “best place in the world for us to be based” for a business that had developed open source software already widely used by bioinformaticians. 

Maria stressed the move to Cambridge was unrelated to political unrest in Catalonia. “Cambridge has always been our goal for a presence from which to build the international business and we see that as clearly as ever – Brexit or no Brexit,” she said. 

“The facilities, excellent science, availability of resources and the favourable investment climate for a bioinformatics company are second to none in the world.”

Pablo added: “Cambridge will increasingly become a leading world centre for our kind of business and our kind of people.” 

The bioinformatics market alone generates over $6 billion revenues with explosive growth forecast to reach $16bn by 2020.

Maria said: “Due to the rapid drop of costs in sequencing technology and the need to personalise products based on the genetic profile of individuals, we are now generating more DNA data than we can analyse.
 
“A solution to cope with this vast amount of data is required – and that solution is Lifebit. Lifebit enables scientists, R & D and medical professionals to deliver DNA analysis at scale.

“During our PhDs, we built a new open-source programming language for genomics. Our open-solution is now used by half of the world’s organisations doing DNA analysis, and four of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies.

“Our open-source solution has created the foundation for the industry. Yet companies still need to build custom software and hardware on top of it. This takes a lot of money, time and exceptional talent.

“Lifebit changes this: it is the world’s first intelligent genomics platform that understands DNA data and generates meaningful insights like humans do at scale. This makes generating DNA insights at least 10x cheaper and 30x faster than anything that exists today.”

• PHOTOGRAPHS SHOW: Lifebit CEO Maria Chatzou (top) and co-founer, CSO and CTO Pablo Prieto

A drones ‘n’ phones technology solution from product design hothouse Cambridge Consultants will deliver packages direct into a customer’s hands regardless of location.

The dual-edged ‘find and flash’ technology play promises to revolutionise the future of on-demand deliveries with uses in consumer transactions and also in medical emergencies, says the company.

Its DelivAir drone delivery concept implements a patent-pending two stage routing process. The delivery starts by using GPS to navigate to a user’s smart phone location, periodically requesting secure location updates during the flight until it arrives within visual range. 

Then the drone switches to precision optical tracking and a 3D imaging and ranging system to both locate and authenticate the recipient. 

When the drone reaches the recipient, they simply point their mobile phone flash LED to the sky which blinks a coded pattern, allowing the drone to verify that it is delivering to the correct person. 

The drone moves directly above this flashing LED, remaining at a safe height above ground. The package is then lowered down into the recipient’s hands, using a stabilising winch to keep the package steady, where it is then simply unhitched by the recipient and the drone returns to its base. 

“Drone delivery is fast and ideal for something that is needed immediately. In that case, a consumer wants a delivery directly to them as a person – not to a location,” said Nathan Wrench, head of the industrial and energy business at Cambridge Consultants. 

“Our DelivAir concept has the potential to revolutionise the delivery process, by removing the address restriction that other drone technologies are limited by. We are taking cloud retail to the next level, delivering out of the clouds and into your hand.” 

This type of ultra-precision delivery is ideal for instant delivery of items needed right away, such as delivering a first aid kit to a hiker, or an inner tube to a stranded cyclist or even bringing essential components into remote regions during times of disaster. 

The most compelling use cases may be in cases of medical supplies, such as delivering an EpiPen or a defibrilator to a person in need of these life-saving necessities. 

“Ultra-precision is the future of drone delivery and the opportunities are almost limitless,” said Wrench. 

“The mobile phone changed the way we make calls, from a location to an individual; we believe this technology has the potential to re-shape e-commerce in the same way, making deliveries to a person a practical proposition, no matter where they are.”