Charles Cotton

Charles Cotton is Founder and Chairman of Cambridge Phenomenon Ltd.

He co-authored The Cambridge Phenomenon 50 Years of Innovation and Enterprise and The Cambridge Phenomenon: Global Impact. He is a Director of Frontier Developments Plc; XMOS Ltd; Cambridge Enterprise and is a member of its Investment Committees; Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Panel of Cambridge Innovation Capital; Deputy Chairman of Cambridge Ahead; a member of the Board of Trustees of the American University of Sharjah and AUS Enterprises.

Previously he was a Director of Solarflare Communications Inc. which was sold to Xilinx Inc. in August 2019; a Supervisory Board member of Euronext Amsterdam listed, Tele Atlas which was sold to TomTom for $4.3Bn in 2008; Executive Chairman of NASDAQ listed, GlobespanVirata Inc.; and CEO of Virata Corp. which he took public on NASDAQ in 1999 and achieved a market cap of more than $5Bn at its peak.

Prior to that he was President of Thermal Scientific Inc, and a Director of London Stock Exchange listed Thermal Scientific Ltd. His engagement in high technology dates back to 1983 when he was Sales and Marketing Director at Sinclair Research Ltd. After graduating, he worked in the automotive industry at British Leyland and Ford.

He holds a BA Hons in Physics from Oxford University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.