The Group was founded in 2005 as a spin-out from the University of Oxford by Gordon Sanghera,Spike Willcocks and Professor Hagan Bayley (currently Professor of Chemical Biology at the Universityof Oxford). During the early years of the Company, the Group formed collaborations with key academicscientists in the field of nanopore sensing, including Professor Dan Branton at Harvard University, andProfessors David Deamer and Mark Akeson at the University of California (Santa Cruz). The collaborationsincluded sponsorship of fundamental research in these labs and the formation of patent licensingagreements with these and other institutions to form a foundational portfolio of nanopore sensing expertiseand IP.