Dr Steve Tonge

University Chemist to Scientific Entrepreneur

Steve sees himself as an applied scientist.  When he left university – King’s College London - he went to work for a blue chip company. 

He visited the USA a few times with this company and then became involved with a company that was spinning out over there. 

He feels that this was possibly the best job in the world for him as he ran the lab whilst the founder and other staff members did all the paperwork so he could focus on the science and technology. 

After three years though he decided that he wanted to move back to England so he cashed in his share in the company and used the funds to part fund himself through a PhD at Aston University.  Following that he did a post-doctoral research fellowship and eventually became a lecturer.  Steve soon decided that he did not want to stay working in the university sector. 

Although he enjoyed interacting with students, he found the administration frustrating.  Steve was an active researcher and had come up with a number of different inventions.  With the help of a government funded programme, he embarked upon setting up a spinout.  He subsequently set up a company and developed a skin cream product which enables the delivery of drugs more effectively into the body.  Initially Steve is developing this for cosmetic purposes but he sees lots of potential biomedical and healthcare applications, especially for alleviating back and joint pains.  In fact, he argues that his motivation for developing the company is to have an impact on people’s quality of life.

Steve’s short term aim is to develop the company and then he recognises that if the company moves more into medical applications he will need to obtain more finance and his role will probably diminish.  Long term he would like to develop some of his products for use in less economically developed countries, for example helping lung development of premature babies. 

Steve doesn’t see himself going back to academia full time though he says he may establish some links. He is sure though that he does not want to work in a large company, his earlier experience of the hierarchical management structure in large companies has put him off a move in that direction. 

He explains that at heart he is an inventor and his aim is to continue inventing, for example he comments… ‘even when I was a kid I used to have a shed in the garden and do experiments on a Saturday morning.  I’ve done experiments throughout my life….so this is just another project - you know with more money and a bigger lab’.