The Team
Dr Bojan Boskovic
Managing Director
Dr Bojan Boskovic is the Founder, Managing Director and Principal Consultant of the company. He has more than 20 years of hands-on experience with carbon nanomaterials and composites from industry and academia in the UK and Europe. Previously, he worked as a R&D Manager at Nanocyl, one of leading carbon nanotube Dmanufacturing companies in Europe. He also worked on carbon nanotube synthesis and applications as a Principal Engineer-Carbon Scientist at Meggitt Aircraft Braking Systems, as a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, and as a Senior Specialist at Morgan Advanced Materials. During his PhD studies at the University of Surrey he invented low temperature synthesis method for production of carbon nanomaterials that has been used as a foundation patent for the start-up company Surrey Nanosystems. He was a member of the Steering and Review Group for the Mini-IGT in Nanotechnology that advised the UK Government on the first nanotechnology strategy policy document. Dr Boskovic was working as an advisor for the European Commission (EC) on Engineering and Upscaling Clustering and on setting up of the European Pilot Production Network (EPPN) and European Materials Charaterisation Cluster (EMCC). He has experience in exploitation and dissemination management on a number of FP7 and H2020 European projects, including UltraWire, NanoLeap, OYSTER, M3DLoC, Genesis, nTRACK, APOLO, TriAnkle, Carbo4Power, DOME 4.0 and NanoMECommons, and also in UK Government Innovate UK funded projects, such as UltraMAT and GRAPHOSITE. He is also a leader of a private Nano-Carbon Enhanced Materials (NCEM) consortium and Advanced Materials for Additive Manufacturing (AMAM) consortium. Dr Boskovic has experience of advising VC investors with their investments of over $20M to nanomaterials-based product development companies.
Dr Jelena Aleksic
Head of Innovation Strategy
Dr Jelena Aleksic is the Head of Innovation Strategy at CNT Ltd. She has wide project management, R&D and teaching experience. While she was working as a scientific associate at the University of Applied Sciences in Stralsund, Germany she taught subjects Fluid Mechanics, Gas Dynamics and Mathematics. During her PhD studies in fluid mechanics related to crystal growth at the University of Rostock, Germany, she developed a new temperature measurement method for fluids based on thermochromic liquid crystals (TLC). Her thesis was awarded with the first prize at the South-eastern Conference on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in Orlando, FL, USA. She organised scientific conferences and edited an internationally published science magazine. At the CNT Ltd. she has been working extensively on developing business strategies, and preparation of customised patent landscaping and market research reports in the field of nanomaterials. Dr Aleksic has also been working on management of European collaborative R&D EC FP7 & H2020 projects (UltraWire, NanoLeap, EPPN, nTRACK, OYSTER, M3DLoC, Genesis, Repair3D, APOLO, TriAnkle, Carbo4Power, DOME 4.0 and NanoMECommons) involving tasks such as innovation management, Business Model and Plan development, identification and analysis of Key Exploitable Results, mapping and engagement with stakeholders and other relevant exploitation and dissemination tasks. She is also acting as Exploitation and Innovation Manager on the EC H2020 n-TRACK and as Exploitation Manager on the EC H2020 Genesis project. Through her business development activities, Dr Aleksic raised around €2M funding for CNT Ltd. Previously she worked in many different industries including renewable energies, construction and social media and she is fluent in English, German, Spanish and Serbo-Croatian.
Dr Ana Bankovic Cassidy
Senior Innovation Manager
Dr Ana Bankovic Cassidy is an Innovation Consultant. She joined CNT team in February 2021.
Ana graduated from the Faculty of Physics, University of Belgrade Serbia, winning the award for the best BSc (Honors) Thesis of the year 2007. The main aim of her PhD study and further research was to identify and explain specific kinetic phenomena that occur in positron transport in electric and magnetic field due to non-conservative nature of positronium formation. Ana applied the basic phenomenology of charged particle swarms to study the interaction of positrons with biologically relevant molecules, in order to develop and establish a benchmark for Monte Carlo codes used in positron emission tomography (PET) modelling. Her research activities were undertaken in Centre for Non-Equilibrium Processes at the Institute of Physics in Belgrade, Serbia, a large interdisciplinary group with interests ranging from theoretical, numerical and experimental studies of low temperature plasmas, to studies of positron swarms and their applications, modelling particle detectors and conducting experiments at applying plasma physics methodologies to medicine and biological applications. As a Visiting Researcher at the Open University, Milton Keynes in 2014/15, she worked on quantum chemistry treatment of positron interactions with atoms and molecules using the UKRmol quantum chemistry software.
Dr Karen Brace
Innovation Consultant
Dr Karen Brace joined CNT as an Innovation Consultant in February 2022. Karen graduated from Imperial College with a BSc. in Chemistry (First Class with Honours). As part of her degree, she completed a 1-year ERASMUS research project at Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielle in Paris. She has a PhD in electrochemistry from the University of Southampton. Her dissertation focused on bio-membrane electrodes for the electrochemical detection of phospholipase enzymes. Following her PhD, she spent 2 years in Kenya as a high school science teacher for Voluntary Services Overseas. On returning to the UK, she took up postdoctoral positions at the University of Southampton in both combinatorial electrocatalysis discovery for fuel cells in collaboration with Johnson Matthey and in liquid crystal templated nanostructures for supercapacitor, battery and solar cell applications. She joined Ilika in 2004 as a senior scientist working on high throughput catalyst deposition and screening for fuel cell applications for both commercial and EU funded projects. She worked at C-Tech Innovation Ltd as a project manager on numerous UK and EU funded projects in energy and renewables including fuels cells, electric vehicle batteries, redox flow batteries, ionic liquids and metal finishing. Project included both lab and pilot scale processes. Karen has also worked as an independent electrochemistry consultant primarily in the field of batteries and fuel cells.
Mónica Spreadbury
Senior Administrative Officer
Mónica Spreadbury is a bilingual (Spanish and English) Senior Administrative Officer at the CNT Ltd with large experience gained within a variety of organisations in the private and public sector, both internationally and in the UK. In CNT Ltd. She has been working for NCEM/AMAM private consortium, UK funded Project and EC projects preparing Open Day Workshops, meeting agenda, coordinating administrative activities, communicating with project partners and meeting guests and speakers, facilitating and supervising exhibition stands and taking care of the registration desk. She has also been responsible for managing the websites and developing the virtual exhibitions. Before joining CNT Ltd she worked as a Regional Service Assistant/Officer for the British Council and for BirdLife International, as Office Manager in the Americas Division and as a regional co-ordinator of the World Bird Festival.