The board
Our board is experienced in startups and entrepreneurship
Stephen Bennington – CEO
When the company started Steve’s role was to do everything that no-one else was doing, from HR to bookkeeping. But now the business has grown he focuses on the fundraising and relationships with investors, and leading and setting the goals for the company’s talented management team.
Steve has been running and advising technology businesses for over a decade. Prior to that he was a scientist, designing and building some of the UK’s national science infrastructure and running a research team as a visiting professor at University College London’s Centre for Nanotechnology.
Chris Elsworthy – CTO
Chris is the CTO of Q5D. Prior to this he set up and ran CEL-UK, an innovative additive manufacturing business for 11 years. He built the company into a successful company that manufactures the highly regarded 3D printers sold under the brand Robox®.
Chris trained as an industrial product design engineer and has a broad spectrum of experience in both large corporations and SMEs.
Charles Haythornthwaite
Charlie joined Chrysalix in 2008. He is responsible for leading the opportunity recognition and investment selection process in the Chrysalix RoboValley Fund.
Charlie has a strong technology, sales and marketing background and prior to joining Chrysalix worked as a product manager and in business development for several start-ups.
Charlie has a PhD in optoelectronics and materials science from the University of Southampton. He also has an MBA from Berkeley where he was a Haas Venture Capital Fellow and a Sainsbury Management Fellow, a highly competitive scholarship from the UK Royal Academy of Engineering.
Andrew Smith
Andy joined the board as a Non Executive Director in Feb 2023, and brings to the Q5D board over 30 years of sales and business development expertise. Andy works in the Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) industry where he has worked for multiple Tier One companies and has held various senior roles including After Market Services Sales, Manufacturing Services Business Development and Operations Management.
As part of his multiple roles in the EMS industry, Andy has focused on P&L management, developing high growth customer engagement models and winning significant new business with global technology OEM’s. Andy is passionate about developing long lasting and trustworthy relationships with executives in customer organisations across multiple market segments ranging from Communications, Industrial, Medical, Automotive and Enterprise Computing.
Adam Brunton
Dr Adam Brunton was a physics lecturer in at Leicester University, developing optics and detectors for X-ray astronomy space missions. He moved to Exitech to apply similar technology, commercially.
Adam joined M-Solv in 2008, managing customers and projects in the solar energy sector, then leading the Process Engineering Group before taking on his current role as the director of sales and marketing.
He is the inventor of the laser sintering printed electronics process.
Stephen Bennington – CEO
When the company started Steve’s role was to do everything that no-one else was doing, from HR to bookkeeping. But now the business has grown he focuses on the fundraising and relationships with investors, and leading and setting the goals for the company’s talented management team.
Steve has been running and advising technology businesses for over a decade. Prior to that he was a scientist, designing and building some of the UK’s national science infrastructure and running a research team as a visiting professor at University College London’s Centre for Nanotechnology.
Chris Elsworthy – CTO
Chris is the CTO of Q5D. Prior to this he set up and ran CEL-UK, an innovative additive manufacturing business for 11 years. He built the company into a successful company that manufactures the highly regarded 3D printers sold under the brand Robox®.
Chris trained as an industrial product design engineer and has a broad spectrum of experience in both large corporations and SMEs.
Charles Haythornthwaite
Charlie joined Chrysalix in 2008. He is responsible for leading the opportunity recognition and investment selection process in the Chrysalix RoboValley Fund.
Charlie has a strong technology, sales and marketing background and prior to joining Chrysalix worked as a product manager and in business development for several start-ups.
Charlie has a PhD in optoelectronics and materials science from the University of Southampton. He also has an MBA from Berkeley where he was a Haas Venture Capital Fellow and a Sainsbury Management Fellow, a highly competitive scholarship from the UK Royal Academy of Engineering.
Andrew Smith
Andy joined the board as a Non Executive Director in Feb 2023, and brings to the Q5D board over 30 years of sales and business development expertise. Andy works in the Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) industry where he has worked for multiple Tier One companies and has held various senior roles including After Market Services Sales, Manufacturing Services Business Development and Operations Management.
As part of his multiple roles in the EMS industry, Andy has focused on P&L management, developing high growth customer engagement models and winning significant new business with global technology OEM’s. Andy is passionate about developing long lasting and trustworthy relationships with executives in customer organisations across multiple market segments ranging from Communications, Industrial, Medical, Automotive and Enterprise Computing.
Adam Brunton
Dr Adam Brunton was a physics lecturer in at Leicester University, developing optics and detectors for X-ray astronomy space missions. He moved to Exitech to apply similar technology, commercially.
Adam joined M-Solv in 2008, managing customers and projects in the solar energy sector, then leading the Process Engineering Group before taking on his current role as the director of sales and marketing.
He is the inventor of the laser sintering printed electronics process.
