Illtud is a Farmer, Agri-Food Consultant & serial business owner. His family can trace their agricultural history for over 300 years. He established Charcutier Ltd, a speciality meat processing business in 2011 as a farm diversification project. It won the title of Best Food Producer in the UK from the BBC Food and Farming Awards in 2016. He has worked across the Agri-Food supply chain with companies ranging from start-up street food businesses to leading food halls, Michelin starred restaurants and industrial multinationals. His Nuffield Farming Scholarship led him to cultured meat via the First Symposium on Cultured Meat at Maastricht University where he met co-founder Marianne in 2015. His prior consultancy work spans animal health, welfare and genetics along with food production and food policy. He has significant experience at board level having held a public appointment and a number of board positions.

Marianne is a Chartered Chemical Engineer with experience in bioprocessing for tissue engineering. Her aspirations lie in building sustainable systems to economically scale tissue engineering for ‘quality of life’ applications, currently focused on food production. She previously commercialised technology in tissue engineering bioprocessing from academia to Cellesce Ltd (now part of Molecular Devices), and seeks to emulate those successes with Cellular Agriculture Ltd. She has held several leadership roles including Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Associate Dean for Education at the University of Bath, a Royal Academy of Engineering/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship. As CTO she is a cohort member of the 2023/4 RAEng Shott Accelerator. She also retains an academic role and is currently Director of an EPSRC Sustainable Manufacturing Hub ‘CARMA’.