Cihat Cengiz

After completing his PhD in Engineering at the University of Cambridge and the University of Tokyo, Cihat joined a German Venture Capital firm to support their investment team in the area of digital healthcare. With that fund, Cihat takes care of a 60 million Euro fund and invests in early stage digital healthcare start-ups in Europe and UK. He is proud to invest in a Cambridge-based start-up which Cihat has obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Engineering in Germany, Hong Kong and Japan and holds a Master’s degree in Engineering Management from the University of Warwick. Prior joining the University of Cambridge, Cihat was a Cyber Security Engineering Consultant at Ernst &Young, focusing on Cyber Security issues in the automotive industry. He also gained industry experience in different industries like aviation at Deutsche Lufthansa, Robotics at Robert Bosch Japan and autonomous driving R&D at Leopold Kostal.

For the past decades, scholars have researched the problems, inconveniences and tensions in R\&D processes from the process-perspective, assuring that inter-functional processes between employees from different functions are aligned and that cross-functional integration (CFI) from the process-perspective is achieved. However, findings about the benefits of CFI are still uncertain, poorly understood, arouse controversy in academia and do not capture the holistic problem of CFI in R&D processes. Only a few researchers have addressed the problems from the behavioural perspective, and consequently, an adequate scale to measure behaviours between employees from different functions towards each other is lacking. In his doctoral research, Cihat analysed the interaction between scientific and non-scientific corporate functions of high-R&D corporates in Healthcare, Pharma, Life Sciences, Automotive and Aviation from the behavioural perspective. The aim was to positively influence the cross-functional integration (CFI) of corporate functions from the behavioural perspective. His research resulted in the novel inter-functional citizenship behaviour (IFCB) scale to characterise inter-functional behaviours between employees from different functions. The IFCB scale can be used as a “diagnostics” tool to measure and evaluate inter-functional behaviours of employees from different functions. By gaining insights into this additional perspective, managers can develop process interventions, can create cross-functional teams based on IFCBs or can aim to influence the organisational culture and change management processes by analysing/promoting/inhibiting appropriate behaviours between employees from different functions. His dissertation is anticipated to be a starting point for further research to establish IFCB as a scale in the CFI and support it with an adequate theoretical lens to generate more research for academia but also insights to practitioners on how to manage CFI.

During his PhD, Cihat also supported various initiatives and developed his own technologies in multiple areas of digital healthcare. He developed a novel technology to tackle the trembling problem of patients with Parkinson’s Disease, the build the first prototype of the open ventilator system initiative, the University of Cambridge’s contribution to the UK ventilator challenge during the Covid-19 pandemic and is currently building his own start-up in the area of digital paediatrics.