Dr John Lee Allen (2007)
Physician-Scientist and Cambridge Fellow, Managing Partner at RYSE Asset Management
I have built a career bringing together engineering, bioscience, clinical medicine, technology and venture capital around a simple question: how do we help great science reach the people who need it? As a DPhil student in Neuroscience at Merton, I developed a novel implantable hearing device and served as Captain of Boats, an early lesson in trying to get talented people pulling in the same direction.
I later led a software project at Harvard, writing code that enabled global healthcare data sharing. At Johns Hopkins, I designed and ran a bioengineering study that led to a first-in-human clinical trial. After the privilege of caring for patients, I moved into company building and venture investment.
Today I work across science and capital. As Managing Partner of RYSE Asset Management, I founded and built its fund management business, raised capital for multiple venture funds and venture-backed companies, invested across technology and biotech, and led partnerships with Novartis, Medtronic and the NHS. That work has taken me into public policy, from advising governments to chairing Innovate UK funding panels, and sharpened my interest in how geopolitics and global supply chains shape what gets funded, built and adopted.
The mentoring conversations I value most are about interdisciplinary careers, global opportunities, and the difficult question of where each of us can make our greatest contribution.
