Vjera is the Director of Industrial Partnerships and Commercialisation (IPC) for the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London. The IPC team is part Imperial Enterprise division, dedicated to building and developing the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Imperial supporting both staff and students. Vjera and her team drive the translation of academic research from basic research, through proof of concept to IP protection and commercialisation through a variety of routes.

A key aspect of the team’s work is the development and management of strategic research collaborations with the healthcare industry with a particular emphasis on building multidisciplinary programmes. The team have College-wide relationship management responsibilities for a number of major healthcare companies including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, GSK, Nestle, BMS, MSD and many others.

Vjera has led the establishment of a number of strategic partnerships with these and continues to work with these Corporate Partners to expand their research and educational engagement with Imperial. Internally, Vjera continues to grow the IPC team engagement and departmental in-reach with the particular focus on assisting early career researchers in their industrial engagements as well as both curricular and extracurricular entrepreneurship training.

Vjera, a dual citizen of both Croatia and UK, holds a BEng in Molecular Biology from University of Zagreb and PhD in Immunology from University of Edinburgh.