Primary Job Title Co-founder & Director Primary Organization 
Turner Kirk Trust
Location Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom Regions Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) Gender Male
LinkedIn View on LinkedIn X (Twitter) View on X
Ewan Kirk is a technology entrepreneur and Chairman of the Management Committee of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences.
An investor in early-stage science and technology companies in Cambridge and London, he has also been involved in philanthropy since 2007 through the Turner-Kirk Charitable Trust, which supports science,
technology, engineering, mathematics and conservation causes. The Trust is one of the largest private funders of fundamental mathematics research in the UK.
Ewan is best known for founding Cantab Capital Partners, a science-driven quantitative investment management firm that uses data analysis to research, test and implement systematic investment strategies. Between 2007 and 2016, Cantab grew from a team of two with £30m AUM to 60 people with £4.5bn AUM. Over that period, Cantab was consistently ranked as one of the top-performing quant funds.
Ewan credited the rapid growth of Cantab to the “scientific rigour” of the business. Based in Cambridge, the company is close to the University and the city’s cluster of high-tech companies. Its work resembles “that of a scientific research organisation” more than a London City trading firm. Most of the members of the team hold advanced degrees in mathematics, physics, statistics or computer science.
In 2016, Cantab was acquired by GAM Investments and Ewan was appointed CIO of its new systematic investment business, GAM Systematic Cantab. In 2020, he was appointed as President of GAM Systematic Cantab. He went on to serve as President of GAM Systematic Cantab until 2021.
Between 1992 and 2005, he was a Partner at Goldman Sachs. He was responsible for leading their 120-strong quantitative technology group, made up of mathematicians, scientists and statisticians, which tested systematic investment strategies and was responsible for the bank's quantitative technology in Europe.
He considers the success of Goldman Sachs in quantitative investment to have been due to its dual commitment to both employing top academic talent and investing in cutting-edge technology, a lesson that he carried forward to Cantab Capital Partners.
This approach to business builds on his own academic background. Ewan holds a Ph.D in General Relativity from the University of Southampton; an M.A.St in Mathematics (Part III, Mathematical Tripos) from Queens’ College, Cambridge; and a B.Sc in Natural Philosophy and Astronomy from the University of Glasgow.
Whilst at university, Ewan founded his first business, DaLEK Software, which developed the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) package MicroDraft for Amstrad CPC and PCW computers. After graduation, he became Director of Innovation at Scientific Generics, a consultancy providing cutting-edge scientific solutions to business problems.
In 2007, he co-founded the Turner-Kirk Charitable Trust with his wife Dr. Patricia Turner. The Trust supports both fundamental research in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and standalone projects that seek to leverage STEM research to solve intractable problems, especially in environmental conservation.
In 2015, the Turner-Kirk Charitable Trust provided a £5m gift to the University of Cambridge to establish the Cantab Capital Institute for the Mathematics of Information. The couple have said that they support fundamental mathematics research because it is “uniquely hard to raise money for”.
In 2013, Ewan and Patricia provided a £500k endowment to the Isaac Newton Institute to establish the Turner-Kirk Visiting Fellowship to bring leading international mathematicians to Cambridge. This was followed by a further gift of £250k in 2019 to establish the Kirk Distinguished Fellowship Programme for senior female mathematicians.
They have also provided a £90k gift to SolarAid to launch an innovation hub in Africa to research ways of getting solar-powered lights into more households at a fair market price, and a £20k gift to SotonUAV to research how unmanned aircraft can be used to monitor and collect data on remote and difficult to access environmental locations for conservation purposes.
Ewan is also a supporter of science, business and EU-related political causes in the UK, and was part of the official campaign making the pro-science case for remaining in the European Union in the 2016 EU referendum. He is also a member of the Liberal Democrats Business and Entrepreneurs Network.
Brought up in Glasgow, Scotland, where he attended Greenfaulds High School, Ewan now lives in Cambridge. He is married with two daughters, and he is a fan of music, professional cycling and film.
