Kia Nazarpour

Professor Kia Nazarpour is an Iranian-origin academic and entrepreneur, serving as Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of Neuranics, the award-winning deep-tech semiconductor spinout from the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. He is Professor of Digital Health at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, where he also directs the Edinburgh Movement and Rehabilitation (MoveR) hub — a research centre focused on AI-enabled wearables, neural systems, and digital endpoints for rehabilitation. His research career has been dedicated to understanding how the brain controls movement and applying that knowledge to build better prosthetics, rehabilitation devices, and human-machine interfaces.

Nazarpour co-founded Neuranics in 2021 alongside Professor Hadi Heidari and Dr Siming Zuo, bringing together Edinburgh's AI strengths and Glasgow's semiconductor expertise to commercialise pioneering spintronic magnetic sensing technology. As CSO, he has led the development of Neuranics' patent portfolio, shaped strategic partnerships with global leaders in XR, digital health, and semiconductor sectors, and guided the company's commercial and licensing strategy. His PhD, which won the Europe-wide E. W. Beth Prize for outstanding dissertations in Logic, Language, and Information, was funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Under Nazarpour's strategic leadership, Neuranics raised a £1.9 million pre-seed round in 2023 led by Par Equity and a $8 million seed round in 2025 led by Blackfinch Ventures. The company has won a CES Innovation Award for its magnetomyography (MMG) magnetic sensor and is now collaborating with world-leading Tier-1 semiconductor and XR manufacturers, positioning itself as a global leader in chip-scale magnetic sensing innovation.