'SnapGrade aims to create an accessible educational environment where quality education transcends the boundaries of geography, background and resources'

Why King’s?

King’s has an excellent reputation for STEM education. As a former science teacher, I was passionate about improving my approach to teaching. The King’s degree aligned with my vision of transforming the way science is taught. King’s was also committed to financially supporting teachers like me through scholarship programmes.

What’s your favourite memory of King’s?

A course highlight was the Making and Creating module. It involved developing creative models for teaching abstract STEM principles, making them tangible and accessible to a diverse range of learners.

I was particularly inspired by Professor Dr Richard Brock. He, too, was a former science teacher. He understood where I was coming from.

What’s a key lesson you learnt at King’s?

Part of my course focused on challenging the misconception that the arts and sciences are separate. Science is an abstract concept that you need art to fully explain. Yet art cannot exist without the science behind it.

How did your journey into STEM begin?

It began with a profound curiosity about how things work and a passion for making complex and abstract concepts accessible.

As a teacher, I witnessed first-hand how students struggled to understand abstract STEM concepts and the considerable time it took to mark their work. This led me to create STEM@Home, which developed into SnapGrade.

Can you tell us more about SnapGrade?

SnapGrade is an AI-powered educational platform that transforms how students learn and how teachers mark work. The more we developed it, the more we realised how much it has the potential to fix our broken education system by providing faster diagnostic feedback to students.

The patent-pending tech allows students to take a picture of their work and get immediate, personalised feedback. What makes it so revolutionary is that it doesn’t just identify errors. It provides constructive guidance tailored to each person’s learning style and greatly reduces the marking workload. This means a teacher can spend 95% less time marking and more time teaching.

From teaching to tech start-ups, you’ve had a remarkable career. What’s been your proudest moment so far?

Winning Innovate UK’s 2024 Unlocking Potential Award was a defining moment that validated the vision for fixing our education system and this developed into SnapGrade.

Another highlight was when SnapGrade was selected for the Turk AIX Programme, which was developed by the Foreign Commonwealth Office, and the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology. The initiative supports promising AI start-ups across the UK and Turkey, helping them form global partnerships.

What’s been the biggest challenge?

Navigating the UK’s investment landscape in 2023-4 was challenging. Investors were apprehensive post-COVID, so it was more difficult to secure funding. We’ve now completed our pre-seed round, but pushing through that period was hard. We had to rely on small-scale investments. But if we can get through that, we can get through anything!

Why is making STEM education accessible to people from all backgrounds so important?

I firmly believe that education changes lives. I place a big emphasis on STEM because it’s all about developing critical thinking skills. By making these skills more accessible to all people, we’re creating more diverse scientific and technological work forces.

This helps us empower people to become more informed citizens and meaningfully participate in society’s most important conversations. With SnapGrade, we’ve seen how immediate and personalised feedback removes barriers to education for students from under-represented backgrounds. Many of these may lack access to private one-to-one tutoring, well-funded schools or other resources outside the classroom.

What’s next for you?

I’m doing a PhD at Brunel University. My research focuses on entrepreneurial education, drawing not only on theoretical concepts but practical experience.

We’re also just finalising the soft launch of SnapGrade. The next step is international expansion, with a focus on the American market. We have a new lead investor with a significant US network.

Our vision is to create an accessible educational environment, where quality education transcends the boundaries of geography, background and resources.

What advice would you give to students and alumni wanting to follow in your footsteps?

Take full advantage of the support King’s offers. It’s a treasure trove of opportunities that extends far beyond the lecture halls. This includes the Student Opportunity Fund, which provides students with financial support to develop new skills alongside their degree.

Also cultivate strong relationships with the people in your class and your fellow alumni, your professors, supervisors and mentors. And try to collaborate. That’s what allows us to be creative and grow.

Read more about the other winners of our 2025 King’s Distinguished Alumni Awards here. Want to know more about SnapGrade? Visit the SnapGrade website and Francis' LinkedIn page.