About Vellos

We believe in people and impact

Vellos (meaning arrow in Greek) believes the future rests on scientists, engineers and clinicians with entrepreneurial thinking. It depends on disruptive, out-of-the-box thinking that drives global impact. Our mission is to galvanise the next generation of company founders, giving them the tools to visualise new frontiers, and the support necessary to realise their vision.

To build a better future, we need to act like an arrow, with purpose, speed and impactful accuracy. We instil entrepreneurial purpose through training programmes, help founders aggressively pursue their goals through our venture partners, and support the formation of impactful life-changing companies.

We believe in partnership with and joining forces with likeminded impact-driven people. Our mission has led us to join forces with Fifty Years to develop and support the next generation of founders through the entrepreneurial PRIMED programme and the 5050 company-creation programme.

Prof Sir Tony Kouzarides

CEO of Vellos - Venture Partner at 50Y

Sir Tony is Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Cambridge. He is a pioneer in the field of epigenetics, following a highly successful career as a cancer researcher at the Gurdon Institute. Through his research, and a company he founded (Storm Therapeutics), a drug is currently in phase II clinical trials against cancer.

Tony is the director and co-founder of the Milner Therapeutics Institute at the University of Cambridge, which drives academia/industry collaborations to progress therapies. A serial entrepreneur, Tony is a co-founder of Abcam plc, a research reagents company, and two drug discovery companies, Chroma and STORM Therapeutics and the venture builder, Vellos. He is the founder of a cancer charity in Spain, (Vencer el Cancer) and a Venture Partner with the Fifty Years, a San Francisco-founded investor. He was knighted for “Services to Healthcare Innovation and Delivery”.

Steph Avraamides

COO of Vellos - Leading the UK at 50Y

Driven to increase the quantity of high-quality life science start-ups, Steph has gained experiences co-founding / running a series of entrepreneurial programmes and organisations, including Nucleate Cambridge, Catalyse, Cambridge Gravity, Bio-spark and Vellos. Deeply passionate about amplifying emerging entrepreneurial talent, Steph has organised several pre-accelerator programmes with 150-300 annual participants.

With experiences spanning start-up mentorship, advisory, consultancy, and venture capital, Steph recognised the importance of community building and development locally, founding biotech societies in London and Cambridge, nationally on the SynBioUK Representative Committee, and internationally with the Bits in Bio, iGEM, and Nucleate communities. Uniting missions of supporting the next generation to solve civilisationally important problems led to founding Vellos and joining forces with Fifty Years, where Steph leads the UK.

Dr Louise Mason

Director of Global Programmes

Operating at the intersection of academia, healthcare and industry, Louise has built her career around driving world-class research to achieve meaningful impact. With an academic and industry background in chemistry, materials science and biomedical engineering, she has led large-scale strategic innovation programmes, partnerships and enterprise initiatives. Her work has supported the growth of innovation ecosystems across the UK and internationally. Louise was previously Head of Innovation & Enterprise at the University of Glasgow. She was awarded the Westminster Gold Medal for Excellence in British Engineering, and worked in life science spin-outs in the UK & US. Louise brings first-hand insight into the opportunities and challenges of translating research into real-world impact. At Vellos, Louise leads the growth and delivery of international programmes that empower researchers to develop entrepreneurial skills, pursue ambitious ideas and create lasting impact through innovation.