UCL graduates and students feature in nine Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe categories

This year, UCL’s honourees represent fields including artificial intelligence, fiction writing and robotics. 

Over the past decade, the list has consistently included UCL alumni and students. The twelve honourees this year span nine of the 10 categories, ranging from Entertainment to Manufacturing & Industry and Science.

UCL has a thriving entrepreneurial community, with 527 active student startups that have raised £100m in external investment and currently employ 1,900 people (HEBCI 2023/24).

Angharad Milenkovic, UCL Vice-President (Advancement), congratulated the honourees: “I am tremendously proud of our alumni and students who have earned places on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list. Their achievements across so many categories highlight the exceptional value of a UCL education. This recognition reflects UCL’s commitment to nurturing talent and fostering innovation, ensuring our graduates are equipped to excel in diverse fields and make significant contributions to society.” 

Professor Geraint Rees, UCL Vice-Provost (Research, Innovation & Global Engagement), said: “Many congratulations to all the UCL alumni and students who are recognised in the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Europe list this year. We have a hugely talented community of students and alumni at UCL, and their achievements reflect UCL’s thriving entrepreneurial community. I wish them continued success.” 

Reflecting on being included, Zubair Junjunia (UCL Mathematics MSc 2020) said: "I am honoured to join a group of the best social impact leaders in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Europe list this year. This is incredible recognition for the scale of impact my company ZNotes has achieved and is thanks to an incredible team and our supporters. I'm deeply grateful in particular to UCL who gave me a space to turn a school project into an award-winning EdTech startup." 

Meet the alumni and students who were recognised in this year’s list: 

Arts & Culture

• Seren Metcalfe (UCL Fine Art BA 2020) is Co-director of The Working Class Creatives Database (WCCD), which addresses barriers in creative industries including access, financial instability and lack of industry connections. The database, featuring more than 1,000 members, connects artists with other industry professionals including gallerists and producers. 
• Crystelle Pereira (UCL Modern Languages BA 2017) is a British baker, cookbook author and TV personality. In 2021, Crystelle, was runner-up on season 12 of The Great British Bake Off, propelling her career in food media. From there, Crystelle published her first cookbook, Flavour Kitchen, in 2023. Distributed across Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia, the cookbook reached the number one spot on Amazon's best-seller list in the Gourmet Food & Drink category. The former Goldman Sachs analyst turned full-time food creative has since amassed over 320,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok. Read our 2021 interview with Crystelle.

Entertainment

• Ruby Walden (UCL Geography BA 2021) founded Producers PIN (Production Incentives Network), which aims to help media producers optimise their budgets, secure capital and scale projects by automating the process of matching production incentives to budgets. The company says their ‘Incentives Index’ tool has already helped producers cut costs by an average of 20%. 

Finance

• Dolapo Morgan (UCL Information Management for Business BSc 2017) is an investor and the youngest member of the leadership team at Ventures Platform Fund, a pan-African early-stage venture capital firm that has backed more than 75 companies. She has led investments across 21 tech startups and also created Leveling VC, an initiative to increase capital access for female-led startups in Africa. 

Manufacturing & Industry

• Rokas Bendikas (UCL Artificial Intelligence PhD 2026) and Maria Stamatopoulou (UCL Computer Science PhD 2026) co-founded Laelaps AI to develop fully autonomous robotic security agents. The robotic agents are designed to patrol residential perimeters, gated communities and industrial sites. The company has already secured collaborations with leading security firms like G4S and are negotiating first sales contracts. 

Media & Marketing

• Cecile Pin (UCL Philosophy BA 2017) is a French author based in London.  Her debut novel, Wandering Souls, chronicles the journey of Vietnamese refugees as they adapt to life in the UK. Published in March 2023, the novel has been translated into 12 languages and received several accolades, including the Fragonard Prize for Foreign Literature, a Somerset Maugham Award, and a London Writers' Award. Cecile's second novel, Celestial Lights, is scheduled for release in Spring 2026. 

Retail & Ecommerce

• Tandeep Chowdhry (UCL History & Philosophy of Science BSc 2020) co-founded Unndr, a lingerie subscription company, in 2021. Offering monthly and quarterly plans, the London-based company sells bras, underwear and matching sets designed and produced by its in-house team and counts over 4,000 monthly subscriptions. The brand has attracted nearly 300,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok. 

Science & Healthcare

• Dr Crystal Marruganti (UCL Dentistry Affiliate Research 2023) tackles chronic conditions from the dental chair. Her research has shown unhealthy lifestyles increase the risk of gum disease, and having gum disease increases a person's risk of developing certain chronic conditions. She was the first researcher to reveal the link between psoriasis and gum disease. 

Social Impact

• Zubair Junjunia (UCL Mathematics MSc 2020) launched EdTech startup ZNotes to address educational inequality by providing access to high-quality learning resources and peer-learning support for exam preparation. ZNotes has 500,000 registered users and reaches students in 190+ countries, providing free, high-quality resources (created by students for students) for exams like A levels and GCSEs. As part of the Hatchery incubator programme at BaseKX, UCL's dedicated entrepreneurship hub, Zubair received free tailored support and dedicated office space. Staff from UCL Innovation & Enterprise also helped Zubair in obtaining a Tier 1 Entrepreneur visa, to enable him to continue growing the company in the UK after graduating. 
• Kiki Woehl (UCL Entrepreneurship MSc 2019) co-founded DECAID Academy, a German EdTech platform transforming the creative industry with generative AI. The academy equips agencies and marketing teams with the skills and strategies needed to thrive in an AI-first world through e-learning, live sessions and team transformation programmes.  

Sports & Games

• Elena Petrovskaya (UCL Human-Computer Interaction MSc 2019) is a leading researcher in video game monetisation and how video games relate to gambling. She created the only existing system to classify problematic monetisation in video games. This system has been widely cited by regulators, including the UK Competition and Markets Authority and the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She currently leads the research for a psychological autopsy on gambling and suicide, which is the first of its kind in the UK. 

Read more

• Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe 2025
• UCL Innovation and Enterprise
• The Hatchery incubator programme