The Cerca team

Cerca is led by David Woolger. David is an experienced business leader; he is currently Managing Director of MSL where he has successfully doubled turnover and tripled EBITDA in the last five years.

Prior to this David worked at Deloitte as Management Consultant for 9 years. He is a CIMA qualified accountant, and his standing in the UK quantum technologies community is well recognised, for example by his membership of the UK Quantum ATEP Board.

Dr. Elena Boto is a co-founder and Cerca’s chief technology officer. Elena is an award-winning physicist who has been working with next-generation human imaging since 2014.

Elena has been the lead author on many of the seminal papers which have led to the neuroscience community considering wearable technology as a viable alternative to the current state of the art. Elena was originally trained in physics at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, and has a Ph.D. in Physics from UoN.

Prof. Matt Brookes is the non-executive chairman of the Cerca board. Matt is recognised globally for his work in the field of human neuroimaging with over 120 peer reviewed publications.

For nearly 20 years his pioneering work has helped to transform this field with seminal contributions in the areas of hardware development, mathematical modelling and measurement of connectivity. His most recent work has been on the applications of quantum technologies to electrophysiological brain imaging.

Dr. Niall Holmes is a co-founder and scientific advisor to Cerca. Niall has been developing hardware and techniques to enable wearable neuroimaging since 2016 and is the lead author on papers describing electromagnetic coil systems which have been commercialised and sold internationally.

His work led to an award recognising Niall as one of the top young electronics engineers in the country. He was trained in Medical Physics at UoN, where he also obtained his Ph.D.

Ryan Hill is a co-founder and a scientific advisor to Cerca. He has been working with OPMs since 2017, helping to develop hardware and techniques for wearable neuroimaging. His work on a generic neuroimaging system with lifespan compliance was listed as one of Physics World’s “Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year” in 2019.

He is also the lead author on the first demonstration of an OPM-MEG system with whole head coverage. Ryan achieved his Master’s degree in Physics and Ph.D from UoN.

Eliot Dawson is Cerca’s Operations Manager, after spending over two years as MSL’s R&D Manager. Prior to this he worked as a line manager for an international logistics company. Whilst at MSL, Eliot was actively involved in both the development and installations of all of their OPM-optimised shielded rooms.

He brings that knowledge, including extensive experience of the critical degaussing setup, to Cerca. Eliot has a Master’s in Physics with Nanotechnology from the University of Leeds.

Professor Richard  Bowtell will chair Cerca’s Advisory Board.  Richard is the Director of the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre at  the University of Nottingham and served as the Head of the School of Physics  and Astronomy from 2008-2014.

He has more than 35 years’ experience of developing novel biomedical imaging systems, with a particular interest in  electromagnetic coil design. Richard is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics  and of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and is  Past President of the European Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and  Biology.

Rosemarie Pardington is Director of Integrated Care at Young Epilepsy and will be a part of Cerca’s Advisory Board.

Rosemarie has over 30 years of experience working at a senior level in the Health & Social Care profession, both in the public and voluntary sector.  Rosemarie’s role brings leadership and responsibility for all aspects of health, research and residential operations at Young Epilepsy. Rosemarie will provide insight and guidance to the Cerca Magnetics team on the application of the technology especially in relation to children and young adults with Epilepsy.  She has also been part of the team responsible for enabling the new room to be installed at Lingfield, Surrey