Board of Directors

Ian has more than 30 years of board-level experience in the industrial technology industry and has served as chief executive officer of companies operating in the United States and Europe. Ian was formerly the president of Uniphase Inc, Chairman of Oplink Communications Inc which he took public on the NASDAQ and spent seven years as a partner of Crescendo Ventures llp. Ian founded and since August 2010 has acted as the CEO of Ian Jenks Limited, a consulting company providing consulting services to companies in the industrial technology industry. Ian has been a director of Techstep ASA, a provider of managed mobile services in the Nordics, Paysafe plc., an international provider of payment processing services, and Brady plc, a provider of commodity trading software. He also has served and continues to serve as a director of a number of private companies. Ian received a B.Sc. in Aeronautical Engineering from Bristol University.

Klaas de Boer has served as a member of Smartkem’s board of directors since the Closing of the Exchange. Klaas has been a venture capitalist for more than 25 years, and served as the Managing Partner of Entrepreneurs Fund Management LLP, a venture capital firm, until 2021. In that capacity he served on numerous boards, including Lifeline Scientific Inc. and Heliocentris Energy Solutions AG. He currently chairs AIM listed Xeros Technology Group plc, and General Fusion, Inc., and serves on the board of veriNOS Pharmaceuticals GmbH, all in an independent capacity. Klaas received his M.Sc. degree in Applied Physics from Delft University of Technology and his M.B.A. from INSEAD.

Steven is a Professor of Materials and Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as the Executive Director of the Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Steven has previously worked at the Hewlett-Packard Optoelectronics team. He has been a Director on the Board of several startup companies which include Soraa Laser Diode, Akoustis Technologies and Aeluma Inc.

Melisa Denis has served as a member of the audit committee and mergers and acquisitions committee of the board of directors of Hydrofarm Holdings Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HYFM) since November 20, 2020. Ms. Denis previously served as a partner at KPMG from 1998 to October 2020, including as National Tax Leader for Consumer Goods and as the leader of the Consumer and Industrial Market for Dallas. Ms. Denis has served as a member of the Board of Regents and chair of the audit committee for the University of North Texas System since January 2020, an advisory board member of Women Corporate Directors since 2011, and a board member of Enactus, a global non-profit, since 2019. Ms. Denis is a Certified Public Accountant and received her degree in accounting and her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science from the University of North Texas.

From September 2019 until his appointment to the board of directors, Mr. Peruvemba served as a consultant to Smartkem. Since July 2014, he has served as the chief executive officer of Marketer International Inc., a consulting services firm specializing in the global high-tech industry. Prior to that, from December 2009 to April 2013, Mr. Peruvemba was the chief marketing officer for E Ink Holdings, a company specializing in electronic paper displays. Since June 2020, Mr. Peruvemba has served on the board of directors of WiSA Technologies, Inc., an audio wireless technology company. He has also served as a board member of Visionect d.o.o, an electronics company in Slovenia since September 2017. Mr. Peruvemba has also served as chairman of the board of Omniply, a Montreal-based electronics and display company, since May 2020 and as board member of Edgehog Advanced Technologies an anti-reflective technology company in Canada, since January 2023. Mr. Peruvemba has a B.S. from R. V. College of Engineering, Bangalore, an M.B.A. from Barton School of Business, WSU and a post-graduate diploma in management from Indira Gandhi National University.