Elijah Nazarzadeh

Dr. Elijah Nazarzadeh is an Iranian-origin physicist and entrepreneur who founded Nebu-Flow to commercialise a breakthrough nebuliser technology developed during his research at the University of Glasgow. He received an EPSRC Impact Accelerator Award and an MRC Confidence in Concept grant to translate his academic work, and was selected as one of the top 20 entrepreneurs in Scotland through the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Unlocking Ambition Fellowship — a programme supported by the Scottish Government. These early recognitions enabled him to validate the technology with industry partners and lay the groundwork for the company.

Nazarzadeh co-founded Nebu-Flow — initially incorporated as Acu-Flow Limited — in 2019, alongside Professor Jonathan Cooper of the University of Glasgow's James Watt School of Engineering. As CEO, he has led the company from a university spin-out to a commercially active medical device company with a strong pipeline and expanding team. Nebu-Flow's core technology uses patented surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology to generate aerosol droplets of precisely controlled size within the clinically proven optimum range of 1–5 micrometres — enabling far more efficient drug delivery to the lungs than conventional nebulisers, particularly for hard-to-nebulise drugs including biologics, nanomedicines, and RNA-based formulations.

Nebu-Flow has won the Institute of Physics Business Start-Up Award and a £1 million Innovate UK grant, and in 2024 secured £4.7 million in additional investment led by SCVC, with support from Scottish Enterprise, Foresight WAE Technology, SIS Ventures, Ascension, and Conduit EIS Impact Fund. The funding is being used to advance the company toward commercialisation of its next-generation nebuliser platform, targeting the global inhalable drug market — valued at approximately $33 billion — and positioning Nebu-Flow for a portfolio of RNA and biologic inhalation applications that were previously not deliverable via nebulisation.