Alumni changemakers
Dylan McKee (BSc Computer Science, 2017)
Dylan McKee is an award-winning entrepreneur, developer, and tech community leader. He launched his first app, myAltitude, at age 13 and later co-founded Nebula Labs, a digital innovation company working with clients like NHS Digital and LV=.
Passionate about Tech for Good, Dylan co-developed *Virtual Memory Box* to help children in care and continues to shape the North East’s tech scene.
Named North East Tech Champion in 2021, he also received national recognition as Young Digital Leader of the Year in 2022.
Hazel Savage (Politics and English Literature BA, 2005)
Hazel is the VP of Music Intelligence at SoundCloud and the founder of Musiio, a pioneering tech company that leverages AI to simplify music cataloguing and discovery. Musiio was acquired by SoundCloud in 2022. One of its standout features, the Segment Select API, identifies the best snippets of tracks for platforms like TikTok, Instagram Stories, and YouTube Shorts.
Hazel won the Entrepreneur Award at the Women In Music Awards 2022 and is an influential voice at conferences worldwide. At a time of intense scrutiny of the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence, Hazel has been a consistent, informed voice on the subject providing clear insights on AI’s capabilities and limitations, emphasising that AI is not an all-encompassing power.
Jerzy (Jurek) Kozyra (Computer Science PhD, 2017)
Jerzy is the Founder and CEO of Nanovery, a biotechnology company that uses nanobots for diagnosing deadly diseases. Under his leadership, Nanovery has pioneered a nanorobot platform to detect chronic illnesses like prostate cancer and severe conditions such as acute liver and kidney toxicity. Founded in 2018, Nanovery’s innovations have applications in life sciences, pre-clinical drug development, agriculture bio, and food safety. Jerzy also served as the company’s CTO from 2018 to 2019.
Since 2021, Jerzy has also been an Editor for the Molecular Programming Society. Previously, Jerzy was a Cohort Member for Entrepreneur First, a company which helps to build startups from scratch in London, Singapore, Berlin, Hong Kong, and Paris.
Laura Keith (Psychology BA Hons, 2006)
Laura is the CEO of Hive Learning, an innovative SaaS platform that revolutionises how organisations design and deliver high-impact digital learning solutions. Laura has worked with leading FTSE 100 companies like Sky, Jaguar Land Rover, and Barclays to implement cutting-edge learning programmes.
She is leading efforts to supercharge the impact of Hive Learning by reducing the time to build contextualised digital sprints from six months to just one week, introducing a more personalised learning experience with a generative AI coach, and delivering data that provides deeper insights into how people are truly learning, beyond simple activity statistics.
Rob McCargow (Medical Microbiology BSc, 1998)
Rob serves as a Director and Technology Impact Leader at PwC, where he leads efforts around the ethical implementation of AI. His role involves advising businesses, governments, and global stakeholders on leveraging AI to drive innovation while enhancing public trust. Rob is also a frequent media contributor, keynote speaker, and an influential presence on social media.
He is particularly focused on the issues and policies relating to the impact of automation on the workforce, the future skills agenda, and ensuring that the benefits to be delivered by AI are equitably spread across society. He is an advisory board member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on AI, an advisor to The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, and a Fellow of the RSA.
Rob Wood (MBA, 1992)
Rob is an accomplished entrepreneur with a strong background in tech and AI. At 42, he founded the award-winning STEM Healthcare to revolutionise pharmaceutical marketing. Under his leadership, STEM expanded into 51 countries and was sold for £84 million in 2016.
Since then, Rob has focused on investing in technology-driven pharma service providers and nurturing tech start-ups. He also serves as Chairman of ADVANCE®AI, where he supports the Executive Team in creating an industry-leading SaaS company that accelerates the performance of pharma field teams. Rob also serves on the boards of several other AI companies showing his dedication to advancing the boundaries of the pharma/healthcare industry.
