On Wednesday 22nd May, the King’s E-Lab hosted Pete Stavros, Co-Head of Global Private Equity at KKR, in conversation with King’s College Provost, Gillian Tett. As an investor, Stavros has helped lead several successful investments across sectors and sizes and has a pioneered an innovative employee engagement and ownership model. He is a firm believer in the power and benefit of employee ownership. Read his reflections on the model, a rare opportunity for a “win-win” in business, and the kind of leaders that can make it happen.

The Ideas Space Incubator is a programme run by Cambridge Enterprise to support and develop high-impact ideas from the social sciences by providing exposure to pathways for impact, skills training, and a collaborative environment. Follow Ane Cornelia’s account of the programme in her work to revive a classic piece of British Industrial Design.

On 25 April, 2024, King’s College celebrated one of its finest—the great philosopher, economist, and mathematician, Frank Plumpton Ramsey. The day, attended by Ramsay’s grandson and his family as well as an array of illustrious academics, included a wonderful exhibition, a buzzing reception and dinner, and a brilliant lecture by Cheryl Misak, author of the widely acclaimed biography of Ramsey. Together, these helped to mark the extraordinary life of a very bright star. Read more about the day, Ramsay’s legacy, and one of the most spectacular near-misses in the history of thought.

Weekly Brunches is a series of practical workshops held on a regular basis in a consistent format for a smaller group of students committed to working on their projects over the academic year. Launched in the academic year 2023/24 and bringing together students from STEM, law, history, linguistics, business, and more, the series shows the importance of an avenue for continuous learning and the benefit of uniting such diverse students curious about how emerging technologies can change the world as we know it.

At the end of 2023, Mexico and the United Kingdom celebrated 200 years of diplomatic relations and reiterated the intentions of both countries to continue conducting efforts to improve their ties. During a fireside chat, held at King's on the 26th of April 2024, Ambassador Gonzales Blanco addressed how we should endeavour to do this, emphasising the crucial role of cultural exchange, education, and trade.

Precedent AI: Revolutionising legal aid research work. This groundbreaking tool transforms a 13-hour research workflow into a sub-30-minute process, making lawyers 26 times more efficient. By leveraging large language models, vector databases, and recently published explainability techniques, Precedent AI offers lightning-fast case reviews, pinpoint-accurate legal precedent searches, and automated memo drafting. It’s not just faster, it’s smarter; providing thoroughly researched, source-tracked responses. We aim to change the game for overworked immigration and asylum lawyers, empowering legal professionals to focus on what matters most: their clients.

On June 23rd, the King's Entrepreneurship Lab hosted its inaugural LLM X Law Hackathon, inspired by the well-established CodeX initiative at Stanford University. This event brought together a diverse group of students, academics, and industry experts from various backgrounds – law, tech, and many fields in between! It generated a lot of energy and enthusiasm, surpassing all expectations. Here's a glimpse of what inspired the event, and what happened during those exciting 15 hours.

The current state of global food security requires urgent attention. In countries across the world, we are failing to act in ways which ensure not just that we can grow “more” food, but that we can grow nutritious food in sustainable ways. Plant biotechnology can help us tackle these pressing problems and, if we embrace innovation, we can pioneer resilient and socially beneficial food systems. Read more about Nadia’s research to do just this.

Ernst Bloch was a 20th century German philosopher whose magnum opus is a three-volumed ode to hope. While the worlds of start-ups and philosophical endeavor can seem to sit at odds with one another, a closer look at Blochian thinking shows what we stand to learn from bridging the two. What we do and how we do it should be infused with a particular kind of hope.

The Luxury industry is a highly influential sector owing to its immense cultural capital, global customer awareness and high visibility. Against a backdrop of rising socio-economic, gender and racial inequalities, however, luxury brand exclusivity may risk alienating large segments of society, thus creating social tensions which puts the industry under mounting pressure to become more inclusive. By working together, and with fashion social enterprises, strategies can be explored to reconcile luxury and inequality within a framework and set of partnerships that contributes to a fairer, more sustainable world.

Delve into the remarkable journey of Sir Gregory Winter, where revolutionary science and entrepreneurial tenacity collide, promising an inspiring tale that has led to a paradigm shift in the pharmaceutical landscape.

Remarkably, only 1 in 10 people know that dementia is the leading cause of death in the UK and we are only beginning to comprehend the complex causes of this silent global trend. In fact, such is the magnitude of recent scientific discoveries in dementia that researchers, doctors, and public health bodies alike are struggling to agree on what dementia even means and how we should diagnose it. Our choice of a definition for dementia can have a potentially devastating impact on how we live with it. A radical rethink on traditional approaches is required.

On 7th March, the E-Lab hosted Tim Yip in the Provost’s Drawing room. Yip, a filmmaker, artist, photographer, museum exhibition designer and much more, spoke, alongside his life-size doll Lili, with Alan Macfarlane, historian and Life Fellow of King’s, and Monique Boddington about the role of imagination and spirit in bridging different worlds (both in art and in reality). We can learn many things from Yip’s worlds of wonder and enchantment including how creativity, discovery and the art of communication are central for bringing people together across difference.

On 6th March 2024, the King’s E-Lab welcomed Cambridge Alumna and Nobel Prize Winner Greg Winter. Greg is an accomplished molecular biologist with an esteemed research career and an outstanding record of establishing successful spin-outs, including Cambridge Antibody Technology (acquired by AstraZeneca), Domantis (acquired by GlaxoSmithKline) and Bicycle Therapeutics. In conversation with Henrietta Mbeah-Bankas, Head of Portfolio at NHS England and an Executive MBA Student at Cambridge Judge Business School, Winter shared insights on his illustrious career and relayed important lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs. His reflections prompt the question: is it time to rethink the entrepreneurship ecosystem in academia?