Shahida Imani

Shahida Imani is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Singular Photonics, an Edinburgh-based fabless semiconductor company developing SPAD (Single-Photon Avalanche Diode) image sensor technology for 4D imaging applications. She co-founded the company in February 2024 alongside Professor Robert Henderson, Dr. Aravind Venugopalan, and Dr. Neil Finlayson, bringing together decades of academic photonics research from the University of Edinburgh's CMOS Sensors and Systems Group and translating it into a commercial product company.

Prior to co-founding Singular Photonics, Imani developed her career at the intersection of deep-tech commercialisation and enterprise leadership, building the commercial and strategic foundations needed to take highly technical semiconductor products from laboratory prototype to market-ready platform. Her background spans business development, go-to-market strategy, and operational leadership in technology ventures, giving her the complementary skill set required to lead a team of PhDs and engineers towards commercial traction.

Under her leadership, Singular Photonics generated revenue within its first year of incorporation — a rare achievement for a deep-tech semiconductor spinout — and secured partnerships with leading instrumentation companies. The company has raised funding from the Scottish Venture Fund, Cambridge Angels, and Old College Capital, and has been selected for Silicon Catalyst UK's incubation programme and the UK government's Chipstart UK initiative. Singular Photonics produces the Andarta and Sirona SPAD sensor families, targeting applications in Raman spectroscopy, fluorescence lifetime imaging, time-of-flight sensing, and quantum research.