Experts

Khatereh Ahmadi

Executive Director in BD&L, MSD/Merck

Khatereh Ahmadi has worked in the biotech/pharma industry for 15 years. Previous to her current role at MSD/Merck as Executive Director in BD&L in the oncology field, she was a co-founder and CEO of reViral Ltd, leading a Series A round of $21M with EdRIP and Orbimed. She played a significant role in the spin out of Piramed Ltd, and subsequently became head of business development culminating in a significant deal with Genentech and acquisition of Piramed by Roche in 2008. She has consulted for a number of EU and US companies in the oncology field. She obtained a PhD in biochemistry from King’s College London and held a post-doctoral position at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in London working in the PI 3-kinase field. Dr. Ahmadi was awarded her MBA from Henley Management College.

Lilian Alcaraz

Senior Director, New Ventures and Transactions lead for Neuroscience, at Johnson & Johnson Innovation

Lilian is Senior Director, New Ventures and Transactions lead for Neuroscience, at Johnson & Johnson Innovation. He has experience in transacting across a range of collaboration and licensing opportunities, form small molecules and antibodies, technologies, multiparty consortium agreements to digital health.  

Lilian has over 20 years’ experience in Drug Discovery gained through working in both large pharma (AstraZeneca) and CRO (Galapagos/Charles River) environments.

Lilian received his postgraduate degree in Molecular and Supramolecular Organic Chemistry and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Louis Pasteur University. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of York. Over the years, he has been involved in the successful delivery of nine clinical candidates, some of which are still in clinical evaluation. Lilian is the author and co-author of 78 publications and patents, and of a book on Medicinal Chemistry.  

Jelena Aleksic

CBO, PharmEnable

Jelena is a geneticist and serial entrepreneur, passionate about the potential of biotechnology to improve patients' lives. She is co-founder and CBO of PharmEnable, a drug discovery company using proprietary AI and advanced medicinal chemistry to develop the next generation of small molecule drugs for challenging disease areas.

She provides business mentorship for a number of UK startup accelerators, and has been involved for years in programs supporting female entrepreneurs. She is also the director of a life sciences consultancy, SparkBio Ltd.

She is the former CEO and co-founder of GeneAdviser, an online ordering platform for genomic medicine now owned by the UK NHS.

She is a trustee of the charity TReND in Africa, which focuses on scientific capacity building across the African continent.

Ala Alenazi

Investment Associate at Ascension Life Fund

Ala is an Investment Associate at Ascension Life Fund, responsible for deal-flow, portfolio management and technical due diligence. The Ascension Life Fund is a Seed+/Series A EIS fund focusing on the intersection of Tech, Health and Life Sciences. Prior to this, she was the Accelerator Manager at EIT Health for the UK and Ireland: an early stage EU HealthTech Accelerator helping startups with access to finance, stakeholders and markets. Ala is a Molecular Geneticist by training, graduating with a Ph.D. from Cambridge University and degrees from Imperial College London and UCL Cancer Institute.

Nazira Amra

Founder, BeeSpoke Strategy

Nazira Amra is a trained physician and experienced pharmaceutical commercial leader who has spent the last 20+ years working at the intersection of both strategy and operations in both big and small pharma, delivering results in product launch as well as at later stages of the product life cycle across developed and emerging markets. Prior to founding her own strategic consultancy firm, BeeSpoke Strategy, Nazira served as Vice President of Global Commercial Strategy at Intercept Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of novel therapeutics to treat chronic liver disease. She has held numerous senior leadership positions spanning over 14 years at Sanofi. As Head of Operations, Central and West Africa, Dr. Amra led Sanofi's business efforts in 20 countries with oversight of over 300 employees and 100M€ in turnover. Additionally, she served as Sanofi's Vice President Global Launch Preparation Unit where she was responsible for providing a full range of global commercial support to successfully launch new biologics (Otamixaban, sarilumab, and anti-IL4) from Phase IIb onwards. As VP of Global Strategy, Cardio Thrombosis, she led a cross- functional unit responsible for the global strategic direction of Multaq, a product she launched globally, Lovenox, as well as pipeline assets Otamixaban and Semuloparin. Dr. Amra started her career at Sanofi in global product management for Plavix, which became one of the most successful blockbusters in the industry. Nazira holds a BsC in Biology with Honors and an MD from McGill University and an MBA from INSEAD.

Bobby Anderson

Vice President, Silicon Valley Bank

Bobby is a Vice President at Silicon Valley Bank in their Life Science and Healthcare practice. Based in London, his primary focus is debt financing, prospecting, and relationship management for Life Science companies in EMEA of all life stages spanning biopharma, medical device, digital health and diagnostics. Bobby joined from SVB's San Francisco office where he worked on prospecting and debt structuring for VC-backed and public biopharma companies in the Bay Area and Pacific Northwest. He also advised seed-funded companies on strategy and rotated through several technology teams throughout California. He holds a B.S. in Economics from Cal Poly.

Michael Anstey

Partner

Dr Michael Anstey is a Partner specialising in life science investments.

Before joining CIC he was a Principal in the Healthcare Practice Area at The Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) Toronto office. Michael has experience in advising multinational businesses across North America, Europe, India, and Japan.

Michael was also co-founder of an early stage biotechnology company focused on developing small molecule drugs that target protein-protein interactions implicated in disease. Prior to BCG, Michael worked at Oxford Capital Partners, where he focused on investing in early stage life science businesses.

Michael earned his DPhil in Zoology in the field of neurobiology from the University of Oxford.

Michael manages CIC's investments in Bicycle Therapeutics (NASDAQ: BCYC), Congenica, Immutrin, PredictImmune, PolyProx Therapeutics, Sense Bio, Start Codon and Storm Therapeutics.

Charli Batley

Director of Operations, PhoreMost Ltd

Having completed my PhD in Biochemistry at Reading, I very quickly decided that research was not for me. I became a sales rep, where I met Chris Torrance just after he had started Horizon Discovery. I worked for free for two weeks to demonstrate my entrepreneurial credentials, then he took me on – first as Lab Manager, then QC Team Leader, then Purchasing Manager then Group Purchasing Manager when the company went global. To keep my brain going, I also dabbled in Innovate and EU Grant applications and administration, running 5 FP7 and 2 Innovate simultaneously and passing a dreaded EU audit with flying colours. As employee 3 in a log-growth company, I was lucky enough to be exposed to all areas of start-up life – and I was hooked!

In 2015 I left Horizon for another Torrance Start-up, PhoreMost – where I have been Operations Director. I am hoping to advise my mentees in all areas of Operations including the post funding admin stages e.g. EIS/EMI, also HR, accounting, project management - as well as helping them with grant applications and administration.

Sam Barker

BD & Alliance Manager, PhoreMost Ltd

Sam Barker is the Business Development and Alliance Manager at PhoreMost Ltd.

Sam joined PhoreMost in 2016 as a scientist in the drug discovery team and worked across a variety of projects designing and developing new assays to screen for novel targets using the SITESEEKER platform, and to take these targets into small molecule drug discovery.

Deciding to take a step away from the bench, Sam took on the role of BD & Alliance Manager in 2018 where he is responsible for PhoreMost’s commercial collaborations, business development and project management of PhoreMost’s immuno-oncology drug discovery programmes.

Prior to joining PhoreMost, Sam gained his PhD from the University of Exeter in where he worked in collaboration with DSTL Porton Down and the Drug Discovery Unit at the University of Dundee to discover new anti-infectives targeted towards multi-drug tolerant bacterial infection driven by ‘persister cells’.

Maina Bhaman

Keith Blundy

CEO, Storm Therapeutics Ltd

Keith joined STORM Therapeutics as CEO in January 2017. Prior to STORM (from 2007), Keith was Chief Executive of Cancer Research Technology Ltd, the commercial arm of Cancer Research UK (CRT), where he drove the development of CRT to become a global leader in the commercialisation of cancer discoveries. He was instrumental in the launch of the £70m Cancer Research Technology Pioneer Fund in partnership with the European Investment Fund (EIF) and BACIT, developed risk sharing drug discovery alliances with AstraZeneca, Teva (formerly Cephalon), Forma, Merck, and MRCT, negotiated the formation of the CRUK – Medimmune antibody therapeutics laboratory and developed CRT’s geographical reach through establishment of CRT Inc. in Boston (USA) and partnership with Cancer Therapeutics Pty in Melbourne, Australia.

After completing a PhD at the John Innes Institute and a post-doctoral Fulbright scholarship in the US on the regulation of plant gene expression, Keith spent ten years managing and commercialising agricultural biotechnology programmes before transitioning to healthcare through business development at CRT. Keith has a BSc and PhD in genetics and an MBA from the London Business School. He was formerly a director of KuDOS Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Mission Therapeutics and Cancer Therapeutics Pty and is currently on the board of Inivata Ltd and chairman of Cizzle Biotech.

Sarah Brereton

Director, Limewash

Limewash is a strategic marketing agency that helps clients understand their customers, propositions and processes better, before working with them to develop the right mix of communications to deliver value from their marketing spend. We do this with the help of our talented in-house creative team.

We work with a range of medium to large customers across a variety of industry sectors including life sciences and healthcare, financial services and commercial property - locally, nationally and internationally.

Prior to founding Limewash in 2008, I spent 15 years working in marketing strategy within the pharmaceutical, biotech and telecommunications industries formulating, implementing, communicating and measuring the effectiveness of marketing and PR campaigns across a number of target audiences with local, regional and global reach. It was during this time that I wished for an agency that truly understood our business objectives and the customers we were trying to communicate with. An agency that was focused on delivering solutions that provided value for money. Limewash is now that agency.

Brian Burke

Global Head of Strategy and Corporate Development, Horizon Discovery

Brian is an experienced life sciences business leader with a strong track record of success in both strategy and execution. He has benefited enormously from being part of the early NGS and gene editing revolutions. As a result he has developed a keen understanding of how innovation and market development intersect to drive business performance. Brian joined Horizon in 2012 during which time he has led various functions including Sales, Business Development and Product Management. Much of his career has been focused in driving both the NGS and gene editing revolutions, most notably in the fields of diagnostics and bioprocessing. In 2018 he was promoted to the Global Head of Strategy & Corporate Development and is a member of Horizon’s Executive Leadership Team.

Hugo Christie

Associate, Taylor Vinters

Hugo works in the Commercial and Technology team of Taylor Vinters, a law firm focussed on the innovation economy and supporting entrepreneurial ventures, based in the London office, and regularly spends time in both our Cambridge and Oxford offices. He focusses on providing pragmatic and commercially tailored advice to complex legal issues. Much of his time is spent concentrating on two practice areas: Life Sciences and Biotechnology and Significant IT Transactions primarily in the FinTech sector.

He has a particular interest in assisting innovative companies and entrepreneurial teams looking to offer new and ground breaking products and services which go against the norm and utilise or create IP to solve real world problems. He has a particular experience in the following: 

Life Sciences and Biotechnology

• IP licences and commercialisation agreements (including royalty and milestone structures).
• Collaboration Agreements (both R&D and Joint Ventures).
• Spin outs from academia (including the associate start-up advice and the IP licence from the academic institution).
• Regulatory issues (both on medical devices, testing and research and consent structures for data protection concerns).
• All forms of day to day contracting required by a biotechnology company (from initial licensing, collaborations, accessing materials and data, finding expert consultants, contract manufacturing / research and the full spectrum of the clinical trial process).

Mary Clark

Mary Clark, Founder & Managing Director, Optimum Strategic Communications

Mary has a 25-year successful track record in providing strategic corporate and financial communications to both early- and late-stage healthcare companies.

She has run several high-profile Investor focused PR campaigns and has been instrumental in assisting companies with strategic positioning and fundraising rounds from seed and private financings through IPOs, reverse mergers, as well as numerous follow-on public financings.  

Mary has worked with over 100 healthcare clients across Europe and the US.

She has built and led healthcare businesses at several international PR&IR agencies. She started her career at BTG plc where she was involved in the Company’s IPO and the start-up of several new tech and biotech companies.

Ann Connolly

Ann is Senior Director of New Ventures & Transactions for Infectious Disease and Vaccines (IDV) at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, London.

In this role she sources and executes on the delivery of transformational, innovative solutions for healthcare in the IDV space.

Previously, Ann was the Senior Director, Business Development with UCB Pharma where she was responsible for licensing activities to access early stage science and technology to build the Immunology and CNS New Medicines pipelines. Ann was also the Director of Worldwide Business Development at GSK where she was responsible for supporting the Respiratory franchise by delivering novel programmes to complement the existing R&D portfolio; in this position she was also responsible for device licensing activities. Ann also has extensive experience in Preclinical Development and was involved in progressing many R&D programmes across multiple therapeutic sectors for SmithKline Beecham/GSK.

Ann studied for a Masters degree in Pharmacology at Southampton University and holds a PhD in Biochemical Toxicology from the University of Surrey

Peter Crane

Jane Dancer

Independent Adviser

Jane has over 30 years’ experience in the life science industry across biotech, pharma and agrochemicals. She serves on the boards of Spirea, PharmEnable, Macomics and Nanosyrinx and is the Chair of the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust. Her past roles include Chief Business Officer at F-star, Vice President of Business Development at Cellzome, and Director of Business Development at MedImmune (formerly Cambridge Antibody Technologies). The first part of her career was spent in the agrochemical industry in research and project management.

Jane holds an MA and PhD in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, as well as an MBA from the Cambridge Judge Business School.

Cassie Doherty

Investment Director, Parkwalk Advisors

Cassie is an Investment Director with Parkwalk Advisors specialising in Healthcare and Life Sciences.

Cassie joined Parkwalk Advisors in June 2019, a fund whose focus is investing in University spin out companies. Prior to this, from 2008 she worked at IP Group Plc as an Investor in their Life Sciences team. She has strong experience of investment rounds, company strategy, operations and governance. Cassie sits on several company Boards, including Ikarovec Ltd and MoA Technology Ltd. Cassie is also a Trustee for the Leeds Hospitals Charity.

In her early career Cassie had hands on experience of technology commercialisation. She worked for a start-up that took drugs developed during her PhD into Phase II clinical trials.

Daria Donati

Head of Business Development Bioprocess and Director of Strategic Technology Partnership team, Cytiva

Daria Donati is leading the Cytiva and Bioprocess Business inorganic pipeline, driving growth through M&A and strategic investments for the bioprocess business.
Daria is also leading the global strategic technology partnerships initiatives, bringing forward-looking technology into the everyday lives of Cytiva customers and employees. To that end, she oversees global collaborations, alliances and technology evaluations.

Daria’s roots are in academia and public health. She has worked with the MIM-TDR (WHO) supporting capacity building in sub-Saharan Africa as International Liaison manager, leading global collaborations and funding management to support sustainable development projects in healthcare.
In the business sector, she has over 20 years of diverse management and technology solution experience within biotech and biomanufacturing. She first joined GE Healthcare in 2008, and has been in her current role in the Chief Technology Office since 2018.

She has led key endeavours within vaccine manufacturing solutions and biomanufacturing within Enterprise solutions, which develops and delivers biopharma manufacturing solutions, providing the tools and services to enable speed to market and rapid response, increasing the access to life saving drugs. ology from the University of Pisa, Italy.

Daria was instrumental in driving the development and commercialization of the remarkable KUBio, the first off-the-shelf biomanufacturing facility in the industry, now used by four global customers, enabling production of precision medicines in 13 countries.
Daria is a sought-after speaker at industry and alliance events. In 2017 Daria was named European Businesswoman of the Year 2017 in the category Life Sciences. Her engagement in public health and development of medicines against infectious diseases has brought her to live and work in more than five countries in Africa, Europe and North America. She served as principal investigator working on malaria, infectious diseases, immunology and vaccines at Karolinska Institute in Sweden, from which she earned one PhD in Experimental Medicine.

Her second PhD is in Biotechnology and Transplant Immunology from The University of Pisa, Italy, and a Master in Science, with major in Molecular Biology from the University of Pisa, Italy.

Steve Dowd

Senior Director, Business Development, Kymab

Steve has over 20 years biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry experience in both business development and R&D. He is currently Senior Director of Business Development at Kymab which involves a number of business/corporate development activities to capture value from the company's R&D programmes. This ranges from the initial pitches to pharma companies, through deal execution and alliance management including out-licensing Kymab’s molecules and technology; in-licensing intellectual property; creating and running collaborations; as well as performing commercial and strategic analysis. Steve spent the first part of his career in in big pharma where he held R&D leadership roles with GlaxoSmithKline and SmithKline Beecham. Steve has a PhD from his work at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK) and an MBA from the University of Cambridge Judge Business School.

Dr Sally-Ann Emmas

Lead Scientist, Medicines Discovery Catapult

Sally-Ann has a passion for supporting life science innovation and joined the Medicines Discovery Catapult in 2021 to help SMEs identify opportunities, optimise resources and de-risk their programmes.

Sally-Ann has over 25 years’ experience in the life science sector across pharma, diagnostics, and animal health. She has in depth expertise in preclinical development across different disciplines and disease areas, with a focus on translational research and clinical line of sight. Her past roles include Project Leader at GE Healthcare, Director at AstraZeneca and Head of Research and Development at a SME.

Laura Ferguson

Associate Director, AstraZeneca

Laura is passionate about supporting life science innovation and connecting the early innovation ecosystem. She has a background in academia through her degrees in Biology from Oxford, cancer stem cells from Bristol, molecular evolutionary genetics from Cambridge, and a Fellowship in molecular genetics and genomics from Christ Church Oxford. She has experience in entrepreneurship and finance through her roles setting up the UK operation of an equity crowdfunding platform specialised in life sciences, and new company creation and financing in the Seed Funds team at Cambridge Enterprise. Laura has now joined industry as part of the Partnering and Strategy team at AstraZeneca, where she is supporting external innovation activities with particular responsibility for respiratory, digital, and ecosystem collaborations. She is also the proud mum of three rather active boys who, as complete strangers often like to point out, ‘keep her on her toes’.

David Ford

Angel Investor, Arrowfield Capital

David is an Oxford-based life sciences angel investor.

Since 2016 he has been focused on early-stage investing, managing the Arrowfield Capital syndicate, and his passion is working with young companies to realise an ambitious idea and attract investment capital for growth. 

David has over 20 years of global investment experience having started his career in 1997 as a pan-European equity analyst covering the biotech and pharma sectors. Latterly he was Managing Director & Head of Research for Intermediate Capital Group in London where was responsible for oversight of ICG’s Senior Debt and High Yield investments in Europe and Asia, totalling over €10bn of Funds under Management.  Over his career he has developed a deep global network across the capital markets, corporate and investor communities having invested and raised capital globally. 

David is a member of Cambridge Angels, Cambridge Capital Group, as well as the UKBAA.

He has a Masters degree in Biochemistry from Oxford.

Eliot Forster

CEO, F-star

Eliot has more than 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry and previously served as Chief Executive Officer of Immunocore from 2015 and prior to that was Chief Executive Officer of the biotechnology companies Creabilis Therapeutics (now Sienna Biopharmaceuticals) and Solace Pharmaceuticals Inc. Other previous roles include Head of Development and Operations for the EU and Asia at Pfizer. Eliot has held a number of non-executive Director roles and is currently non-executive Chairman of Avacta plc. He is an Honorary Visiting Professor of the Pharmacology and Physiology Department at the University of Liverpool, a Board member of OSCHR (Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research), MedCity and the National Genomics Board. He holds a PhD from University of Liverpool and an MBA from Henley Management College.

David Grainger

Co-Founder at Foundation Institute for 21st Century Medicine; Founding Partner and Chief Scientist at Medicxi; Executive Chairman at RxCelerate

Following an academic career at Cambridge University spanning 20 years, leading a world-renowned group investigating the biology of chronic inflammation, David joined Index Ventures as a Venture Partner, before co-founding leading European Venture Capital house Medicxi in 2015. He is now Chief Scientific Advisor to Medicxi, while creating new biotech companies, together with Richard Mason, at the Foundation Institute for 21st Century Medicine, based at Babraham Research Campus.  David is also co-Founder Executive Chairman at RxCelerate Group, a rapidly-growing provider of out-sourced drug development services to the pharmaceutical industry, with more than 40 staff also based at Babraham Research Campus.  David has more than 70 academic publications in journals including Nature, Science & Nature Medicine, is an inventor on more than one hundred patents, and founded more than 20 biotech companies, including Funxional Therapeutics (sold to Boehringer Ingelheim in 2012) and XO1 (sold to Janssen in 2015). As DrugBaron, David is also a well-known blogger with Forbes, and writes extensively on drug discovery and development.

Jeremy Griggs

Business Development Director, Europe, GSK

Jeremy is a Senior Director in GSK R&D's Worldwide Business Development Team, with a focus on identifying and evaluating innovative emerging science, drugs and technologies aligned with GSK's R&D strategy.

Jeremy is a biologist by training and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. He has extensive knowledge of the drug discovery process, drawn from over fifteen years of post-doctoral experience in the pharmaceutical industry and has a broad-ranging professional network within Industry and Academia.

Beyond his GSK role, Jeremy is an appointed Expert-in-Residence at the University of Cambridge, providing advice and industrial perspectives to academics interested in translating their discoveries into new medicines. He also lectures periodically at Cambridge on Oncology Therapeutics and Drug Discovery and serves on the Council of Governors of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Vishal Gulati

Venture Partner, Draper Esprit

Dr. Vishal Gulati is a venture partner at Draper Esprit a leading European venture capital firm. His investment interests include healthtech, omics and synthetic biology. Vishal has led Draper Esprit’s investments into some of Europe’s leading companies in these sectors including Clue, PushDr, Lifesum, Ieso Digital Health, Fluidic Analytics, Horizon Discovery and Evonetix. He is also an investor in Kheiron Medical, Repositive, Mimi Hearing Technologies, Quit Genius, MyRecovery and Project Sapien.

In addition to Vishal’s role at Draper Esprit, he is chairman of Digital Health Forum and serves on Innovate UK’s Major Award Committee. Vishal also mentors first time founders who are leaving academic careers to start technology businesses.

Prior to this Vishal worked at Atlas Venture, The Wellcome Trust and Radiant Capital. Vishal received his postgraduate medical training at various centres including the Nuffield Department of Medicine (Oxford) and Department of Medicine (St Mary’s Hospital, London) as a Rhodes Scholar.

Joanne Hackett

Head of Genomic and Precision Medicine at IQVIA

Joanne M. Hackett is the Head of Genomic and Precision Medicine at IQVIA and previously was the Chief Commercial Officer at Genomics England.

Dr Hackett is a clinical academic, entrepreneur, investor, and a strategic, creative visionair with global experience spanning successful start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Aside from her curious passion for life and positivity, Joanne is known for building innovation, driving personalised medicine and leading through fast paced, complex changing ecosystems and integrations. Joanne's goal is to contribute in bringing the world novel, cost effective and simple health care solutions, and she is particularly keen on building the case for prevention, open science and citizen genomics. She has extensive global experience across academic, business and clinical institutions, and enjoys sharing her experiences with the Boards she sits on as well as companies she provides strategic advice to.

Joanne has been publicly recognised for her relentless pursuit of revolutionising healthcare and has recently been named one of the top six Influential Leaders in Healthcare by CIO Look, the Accenture Life Science Leader of the year 2019, Freshfields Top 100 Most Influential Women 2019, One HealthTech 2018 Top 70 Women in the NHS, Pharmaceutical Market Europe’s  2018 30 women leaders in UK healthcare and BioBeat 2017 Top 50 Women in Biotech Award. Joanne believes in human courage and perseverance against the odds, and demonstrates that positive change, whether in a company or in one’s personal life, can be carved out from even the greatest of trials. As a believer of ‘health = wealth’, Joanne is an internationally known yoga instructor.

Hermann Hauser

KBE, CBE  FRS, FRSC, FREng FInstP - Amadeus Capital Partners

In 2015 Hermann was awarded an KBE for services to Engineering and Industry.

Serial Entrepreneur and Co-founder of Amadeus Capital Partners, Dr Hermann Hauser KBE has wide experience in developing and financing companies in the information technology sector. He co-founded a number of high-tech companies including Acorn Computers which spun out ARM, E-trade UK, Virata and Cambridge Network. Subsequently Hermann became vice president of research at Olivetti. During his tenure at Olivetti, he established a global network of research laboratories. Since leaving Olivetti, Hermann has founded over 20 technology companies. In 1997, he co-founded Amadeus Capital Partners. At Amadeus he invested in CSR, Solexa, Icera, Xmos and Cambridge Broadband. 

Hermann is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the Royal Academy of Engineering, as well as an Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. In 2001 he was awarded an Honorary CBE for ‘innovative service to the UK enterprise sector’. In 2004 he was made a member of the Government’s Council for Science and Technology and in 2013 he was made a Distinguished Fellow of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT. 

Hermann has honorary doctorates from the Universities of Loughborough, Bath, Anglia Ruskin, Strathclyde, Glasgow and York. 

Theodora Harold

CEO, Crescendo Biologics

Theodora Harold was appointed CEO of Crescendo Biologics (Crescendo) in May 2019. She joined the Company in 2016 and was promoted to CEO, having previously held both CFO and CBO roles. She has over 20 years’ experience with both private and listed biotech SMEs and to date she has helped raise c.$200m for the sector. She was on the founding teams of both MISSION Therapeutics and PsiOxus Therapeutics where she was CFO, as well as having held executive roles with companies such as Cytomyx Holdings Plc and Orthomimetics. Theodora qualified as Chartered Accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers and read Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Miao He

David Holbrook

NED of Oxford Biodynamics plc.

David Holbrook is a qualified physician who has spent thirty-five years in medicine and medical innovation, and the last twenty in life sciences spinout investing, principally from academia. After senior business development roles in Glaxo and Roche he headed up Imperial College’s spinout activities, led the life science practice of UK venture capital manager MTI (who raised and managed a fund with The University of Manchester), and most recently was Director of Life Science Seed Funds at Cambridge University Enterprise and Head of Seed Funds at LifeArc.

David holds degrees from King’s College London, Oxford University, and Harvard University.

Jackie Hunter

Chief Executive Clinical Programmes & Strategic Partnerships, Benevolent AI

Jackie Hunter is currently a Board Director of BenevolentAI, a UK unicorn company that uses artificial intelligence to disrupt the drug discovery and development process. She has held numerous senior leadership positions in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and innovation industries, working for a number of companies including SmithKline Beecham, GSK, Proximagen and latterly OI Pharma Partners, which she founded in 2010. Jackie served as CEO of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council between 2013 and 2016. She is also a Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society and of the Academy of Medical Sciences. For her services to the pharmaceutical industry, she was awarded a CBE in 2010 Birthday Honours and the 2010 Women of Achievement in Science, Engineering and Technology Award for Discovery, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She is a member of the Biomedical Advisory Board member for A* Singapore and a non-Executive Director of the UK Bioindustry Association.

Steve Jackson

University of Cambridge and Cancer Research UK Professor of Biology, and Head of Cancer Research UK Laboratories at the Gurdon Institute

Steve Jackson FRS, FMedSci is University of Cambridge and Cancer Research UK Professor of Biology, and Head of Cancer Research UK Laboratories at the Gurdon Institute. His research (publication h-index 128, citations >71,000; Google Scholar) has identified key principles by which cells respond to and repair DNA damage, and helped define how their dysfunction yields cancer and other age-related diseases. Steve is a fellow of the Royal Society and has received many prizes, including the 2015 Gagna and van Heck Prize for Medicine, the 2016 King Faisal International Prize for Science, the 2016 AH. Heineken Prize for Medicine, and the 2019 Fondation ARC Léopold Griffuel Award for Translational and Clinical Research. 

To translate his academic work towards patient benefit, in 1997 Steve founded the drug-discovery company KuDOSPharmaceuticals Ltd., then served as its part-time Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) until and after its acquisition by AstraZeneca. Several KuDOS-derived drugs are in clinical trials, with the most advanced, the PARP inhibitor olaparib/Lynparza^TM, being a marketed drug for ovarian and breast cancers worldwide. In 2010, Steve founded Mission Therapeutics Ltd. (Babraham, Cambridge) to exploit advances in protein ubiquitylation and deubiquitylation to derive new medicines, and until recently served as its part-time CSO. Steve’s science also underpinned the foundation of Carrick Therapeutics Ltd., for which he now serves as a scientific advisor. Steve is a Science Partner of Ahren Innovation Capital, and serves as part-time Chief Executive Officer for Adrestia Therapeutics Ltd., a company that he co-founded in 2018. Steve’s academic laboratory is currently further defining mechanisms of DNA repair and associated processes, with a view to delivering new biological insights and identifying therapeutic opportunities for cancer and various other diseases.

Stewart Kay

CBO, Crescendo Biologics Ltd

Stewart joined Crescendo in 2019 as Chief Business Officer and has over 20 years’ experience in business development. He previously worked at GSK as Senior Director, Transactions in GSK’s Worldwide Business Development team gaining significant experience in leading and closing a wide range of deals. Prior to that Stewart held the position of Vice President Commercial Development and member of the executive management team at Pharmagene plc and as Senior Vice President European Business Development at Evotec AG. Stewart started his career at Amersham International (now part of GE) where he held various roles in sales, marketing and business development. Stewart holds a BSc. in Biochemistry and a MBA from Warwick Business School.

Michael Kipping

Health Innovation Lead, Innovate UK

Michael is a Health Innovation Lead at Innovate UK and responsible for the Biomedical Catalyst grant funding programme that supports UK life science SMEs. He has experience in supporting companies to access funding, navigation of regulatory pathways and different approaches to commercialisation. 

He has a keen interest in regulation having worked at MHRA in the Devices Division and is currently on the advisory board of The Organisation for Professionals in Regulatory Affairs (TOPRA).

After completing his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering (orthopaedic implants) he spent 10 years in industry in a range of commercial roles with Guidant, Boston Scientific and BIOTRONIK where he was responsible for commercial operations in UK & Eire.

Mark Lees

Vice President Corp Strategy and Operations, F-star Therapeutics

Mark has a degree in Biochemistry from Oxford University, a PhD in Immunology and Molecular Biology from Imperial College and an MBA also from Oxford. He has worked in a range of business consulting roles and biotech companies, including a UCL spin out where he led three preclinical programmes towards the clinic. He has experience in advanced therapies (gene therapy), small molecules and biologics across a range of rare diseases as well as a more recent focus in immune-oncology. He joined F-star from Immunocore where he supported the CEO and leadership team in strategy and project management.

Pablo Lubroth

Investor

Pablo focuses on biotechnology and healthcare ventures. Previously, Pablo was an Investment Manager at Midven, a UK based early-stage biotech fund, and worked in Corporate Development at the cell and gene editing company Horizon Discovery.   

He holds degrees in Neuropharmacology and Biochemical Engineering from University College London and an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from the University of Cambridge.

Tim Luker

VP External Innovation, Eli Lilly

Tim Luker is currently VP External Innovation at Eli Lilly. He leads Lilly's external advancing innovation process within Global Corporate Business Development. This role supports Lilly’s external VC funds targeting transformational early stage research across 4 therapy areas and runs due diligence and search and evaluation initiatives.

Tim is an experienced drug hunter with 17 years’ experience (>60 patents and publications). Prior to Lilly he worked at Shire, Polleo Pharma (founder) and AstraZeneca.

Tim has a PhD in chemistry from the University of Southampton, carried out post-doctoral research at Universiteit Van Amsterdam and is a Prince2 qualified project manager.

Allan Marchington

Managing Partner, Bridge Valley Ventures

Allan Marchington is a founder and Managing Partner at Bridge Valley Ventures a UK based Life Science investor which was established by LifeArc of the UK leading medical charities.  Prior to BVV, Allan was formerly a Founding Partner at Apposite Capital and an EIR at Abingworth management. Before Abingworth Allan has a number of  operational roles; as Senior Vice President at Millennium Pharmaceuticals where he served on the senior management team in Cambridge Mass. He also served as Chairman of Millennium Pharmaceuticals in Europe. Allan joined Millennium following their acquisition in July 2000 of UK based company Cambridge Discovery Chemistry, where he was CEO and founder. Allan began his career as a medicinal chemist at Pfizer Central Research.

Allan has served on a number successful company Boards  including the UK BioIndustry Association, Ambit Biosciences Inc., Ambrx Inc., Birdrock Bio Inc., Calchan Ltd and Convergence Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

Christine Martin

Head of Life Science Investment, Cambridge Enterprise

As Head of Life Science Investment within the Life Sciences team at Cambridge Enterprise (part of the University of Cambridge) Christine focuses on drug discovery and is responsible for a broad portfolio including University of Cambridge spin-outs Carrick, STORM, Z-factor, PhoreMost, Qkine and PolyProX.

Christine previously worked within the Cambridge Enterprise Technology Transfer team, managing the licensing of University intellectual property. Christine was also responsible for the University of Cambridge-GSK open innovation drug discovery initiative based at the Stevenage BioScience Catalyst (SBC), where she worked closely with academics to attract funding for translational projects. Prior to Cambridge Enterprise, she worked at Biotica Technology, a University of Cambridge biotech spin-out, for 11 years. 

Christine has an MA and DPhil from the University of Oxford, has authored over 20 peer-reviewed journal articles and is an inventor on over 20 patents. She was the recipient of the Arthur E. Schwarting award in 2006 and featured in BioBeat’s 50 Movers and Shakers in BioBusiness 2018. Christine joined Cambridge Enterprise in September 2011.

Jolyon Martin

Jonathan Milner

CEO, Meltwind Advisory Limited

Jonathan is an experienced entrepreneur and investor who is passionate about supporting UK life science and high-tech start-ups.

Jonathan gained his doctorate in Molecular Genetics at Leicester University after graduating in Applied Biology at Bath. From 1992–95, he was a post-doctoral researcher at Bath, following which he worked at the University of Cambridge in the lab of Professor Tony Kouzarides researching the molecular basis of breast cancer.

He identified the market opportunity for supplying high-quality antibodies to support protein interaction studies, and in 1998, founded Abcam with David Cleevely and Professor Tony Kouzarides.

Since then Jonathans’ passion for supporting UK life science and high-tech start-ups. Has seen him provide considerable investment and support to over 30 companies and assist three technology companies to IPO on the London AIM Stock exchange.

Jonathan’s other passion is philanthropy. His projects are focused on education, human health, and conservation.

Tim Minshall

Tim is the inaugural Dr John C Taylor Professor of Innovation at the University of Cambridge, Head of the Institute for Manufacturing and Head of the IfM’s Centre for Technology Management.

Since joining the University of Cambridge in 2002, Tim has played a very active role in the development of innovation and technology management activities across the University. He also works closely with companies in the Cambridge cluster, the largest and most successful technology cluster in Europe.  Tim was appointed as Head of the IfM in 2017 and is a member of the board of directors for IfM Education and Consultancy Services Ltd and St John’s Innovation Centre Ltd, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Technology, Enterprise and Competitiveness (ITEC) at Doshisha University in Japan. He is a member of the IET's Innovation and Emerging Technologies Policy Panel, and the UK Made Smarter Commission’s Expert Panel. 

Tim is a Fellow of Churchill College Cambridge, where he is also the Director of Innovation and Engineering Outreach.   He is a recipient of a University of Cambridge Pilkington Prize for Teaching Excellence and a Royal Academy of Engineering/ExxonMobil Excellence in Teaching Award. He is also actively involved in outreach activities to raise awareness of engineering and manufacturing among primary and secondary school children and their teachers.

Before joining the University, he was a Project Manager at St John's Innovation Centre, where he worked on a series of projects to support industry / academic collaboration focused around new technology ventures. Prior to working at St John's Innovation Centre, he worked as a teacher, consultant, plant engineer and freelance writer in the UK, Australia and Japan. He has B.Eng. from Aston University and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, Department of Engineering.

Mariam Mirza

Business Psychologist Consultant, OE Cam LLP

Mariam is a Business Psychologist Consultant at OE Cam, focusing on the assessment and development of individuals and teams. Mariam has worked in helping build effective teams at a range of levels across public and private sector organisations.

Alongside her consulting role, Mariam has facilitated team effectiveness sessions for students at Cambridge University.

Mariam has an MSc in Occupational and Organisational Psychology and a BSc Psychology from Durham University.

Mariam is BPS Level A & B trained and an active member of the British Psychological Society.

Kate Moss

Partner – Pharmaceuticals & Lifesciences, Baringa Partners

I am a Management Consultant in the life sciences Industry specialised in helping companies implement strategy through the development of capabilities and positive engagement which deliver the desired performance and value.   

Until recently I was a Partner at PwC having joined the Consulting profession from a successful Pharmaceutical Industry career which started in Medical sales and ended in Global Clinical Development & Programme Management. My early sales experience fuelled my passion for designing programs which delivered clinical evidence to support decisions by patients, payors and regulators. I worked across all phases of clinical development across a range of organisations concluding in a start-up where I designed clinical trials directly with the investigators and patients and delivered the evidence package which supported successful product approval by the US and EU health Authorities, launch within the US and subsequent reimbursement in Europe and launch in Japan.

My Consulting career has included a wide range of business strategy, performance improvement, technology and cultural change projects across the life sciences Industry. 

The skills & knowledge I bring include:

• Understanding the capabilities needed to deliver a strategy and how to put them in place;
• Designing and delivering clinical evidence packages to support internal decision making, regulatory approval and reimbursement;
• Understanding and managing expectations in Quality & Risk Management for GCP / GVP related activities;
• How to manage a project or program of work to arrive at an answer/outcome;
• Building a team / organisation who will deliver their best performance;
• Defining a strategy, what are the things you need to consider and how to make it work for you.

Rabab Nasrallah

Rabab Nasrallah is an investment professional with Earlybird Venture Capital based in Germany. As part of the Earlybird Health team, Rabab is focused on investing in companies across the healthcare space. Prior to this role, Rabab was the Program Manager for INCUBATE – an Australian accelerator supporting entrepreneurs with strong affiliation to the University of Sydney, Australia. With an extensive research background, Rabab has held roles in leading global research organisations in Australia and the UK, including The Babraham Institute, Cambridge. Rabab has a PhD in regenerative medicine from UNSW, Australia. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Babraham Institute, Rabab worked primarily in the field of immunology.

Natalia Novac

Director, Emerging Technology & Innovation, Corporate Business Development, Eli Lilly

Natalia Novac is a part of the Emerging Technology and Innovation Group and is responsible for search and evaluation of novel healthcare technologies across all Eli Lilly indications in Europe. Natalia is involved in the scientific evaluation of novel life science assets coming from multiple venture funds where Eli Lilly participates as a limited partner. Natalia is an experienced pharmaceutical industry professional with solid background in oncology, endocrinology, immunology and multiple sclerosis. Natalia has a PhD in molecular biology and MSc in Microbiology.

Jane Osbourn

Chair of BioIndustry Association, Chair of Mogrify

Jane was an early employee of Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT), which became MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca. At CAT she contributed to the development of phage display technology, for which Sir Greg Winter was awarded the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 2018. An expert in biologics discovery and development, she has authored many key publications and patents, and during her time at MedImmune / AstraZeneca, made a significant contribution to the discovery and development of eight marketed drugs and more than 40 clinical candidates. She has recently taken on the role of chair of the Cambridge-based cell therapy company Mogrify and is involved in a number of other biotech start-up initiatives. She is passionate about the development of the UK biotechnology sector and was elected Chair of the Board of Directors of the BioIndustry Association in 2015. She is also a Director of Babraham Research Campus Ltd and a Director of Cambridge Enterprise. Jane has a First Class degree in Natural Sciences (Biochemistry) from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in plant virology from the John Innes Institute in Norwich. She has presented at a number of parliamentary Select Committees and has previously served as a Member of the UK Medical Research Council Industry Grant Award Assessment Panel, and is a member of the Crick Translational Advisory Group. In 2016 she was recognised in the PharmaVoice 100, and also in Fierce Pharma’s “Fierce Women in Biopharma” – one of 15 women in the global industry noteworthy for their leadership, providing mentorship and helping increase opportunities for women in science. In 2019 she was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s birthday honours for services to drug discovery, development and biotechnology.

Peju Oshisanya

Director, Clinical Programme Leader

Peju has worked in the clinical research industry for over 15 years during which she has acquired wide-ranging experience relating to strategic clinical programme leadership, planning and management of clinical trials with responsibility for global clinical programmes. She started her career working in early drug discovery and exploratory phase focused on the transition of early stage assets to clinical development. Following this, she moved into project management responsible for the operational delivery of key clinical programmes within Eli Lilly, Sanofi Aventis and Pfizer.

At Takeda, as a senior clinical programme manager, she was responsible for the operational execution ofa number of pivotal registration clinical programmes and  a large Life Cycle Management programme within Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) of over $500M;  providing oversight of day to day running of the programme and line extension activities, development of the recruitment and retention strategy, KOL and patient advocacy group engagement and stakeholder management (both internally and externally)

After gaining extensive experience with major pharmaceutical organisations, Peju moved her career to working with start-up organisations and biotechs. In her current role at BenevolentAI as director of programme management, she is responsible for driving the asset strategy to maximise the value of both early and late phase drug development programmes in a pioneering start-up that harnesses artificial intelligence to accelerate and enhance scientific discovery.

Peju is an advocate for diversity and inclusion in data generation in clinical research and is passionate about raising awareness about the importance of including a more diverse population in research and the potential benefits of Artificial Intelligence in enabling this.

Jo Parfrey

Non-Executive Director, Babraham Research Campus Ltd

Jo Parfrey is an experienced and successful investment professional with more than 10 years in the private equity industry. A qualified accountant, ACA, by training, she has worked in the corporate finance departments of FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies. She is a Non Executive Director on Octopus AIM VCT plc and Babraham Research Campus Ltd. She is also a mentor on the Accelerate Program at the Judge Business School, Cambridge. Jo has had significant board exposure, having held a number of non-executive posts. Having been a member of the Investment Committee of a leading private equity house, Jo is experienced in investment appraisal. Skilled in the evaluation of businesses, her strengths include identifying value creation opportunities at both a revenue and profit level. She has supported businesses in growth through investment and cost management, with a wealth of experience of developing business plans and working with businesses to secure appropriate financing. Passionate about growing businesses, Jo has worked closely with entrepreneurs/management teams. She has a wealth of experience of arranging, working with and managing complicated shareholder structures, including a broad range of stakeholder groups. She has a proven track record of working with businesses to drive strategic initiatives and deliver outstanding financial results.  Previous non executive roles include Classic Hospitals Ltd, a group of ten private acute hospitals, IDH, the largest provider of NHS dentistry in the UK, and Verna Care, a manufacturer of infection control products. She has a chemistry degree from Oxford University. 

Pierre Peotta

External Communications Manager, Abcam

Pierre has over ten years of experience in Marketing, Communications and Sales in the Life Science sector, built up across a range of businesses including biotech, CRO and equipment and reagent provider.

Pierre is currently External Communications Manager at Abcam, where he supports the company public relation and social media strategy and operations. He joined Abcam from F-star Therapeutics where he was in charge of the company Comms strategy for four years. Previously, he worked for NanoSight (pre- and post- acquisition by Malvern Instruments) and Biotem.

Pierre holds an MSc in Molecular Biology with a specialisation in business from the University of Grenoble, France.

Chris Poole

Co-Founder, Cambridge Partners Ltd

Chris has over 25 years’ experience in finance, holding senior positions at a variety of organisation types mostly ranging from business start-ups through to mid-size. Chris co-founded Cambridge Partners Ltd in 2020, having successfully run his own consulting business for several years. Cambridge Partners provides outsourced financial and strategic support to companies to help them navigate through their start-up and growth phases.

Chris has held numerous CFO positions in venture backed bio-tech and hi-tech companies, undertaking a range of fundraises and steering a number to successful exits. Chris is a qualified Chartered Accountant, having trained with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Cambridge.

Outside of work, Chris enjoys keeping active, most notably through running and playing football.

Oli Rayner

Oli is an entrepreneur and deal maker with a track record in the early stage healthcare and life sciences sector. He has over 20 years’ experience in life sciences, digital health and tech-driven industry across non-profits, early-stage ventures and investment banking. Oli serves on the board of Zespa Media and on the Advisory Board of Asset Match, companies he co-founded.

He advises several early-stage life sciences and healthtech companies (pre-seed – Series A) on strategy, business development and fundraising, including 37 Clinical (Cambridge-based pre-clinical stage data analytics/digital health venture) and a data-driven women’s health company in the KQ Labs portfolio. Previously, he led European BD & Partnerships for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation focusing on therapeutic development investment in biopharma, academic groups, VCs, and accelerators as part of the $500 million Path to a Cure programme. This centred on gene editing, RNA-based therapeutics, viral and non-viral delivery systems and novel antimicrobial strategies. He has worked extensively in rare disease drug development with Eurordis, and as an expert patient adviser to the European Medicines Agency.

He was a key part of the team that launched the CF Trust/University of Cambridge Innovation Hub, a £10 million translational research partnership focused on novel treatments for bacterial infections, chronic inflammation, and lung repair. He co-developed Project Breathe, an integrated remote monitoring, predictive analytics and virtual clinic platform with the University of Cambridge, Royal Papworth Hospital and Microsoft.

This followed 12 years’ experience in M&A and Debt Capital Markets (Citigroup) and Venture Capital (Bracken Partners), where he led investments in IntegraFin (investment platform for IFAs, floated on LSE at £650m), and Active Hotels (online hotel booking engine, sold to Priceline.com for $160m). Oli graduated from University College London with an LLB in Law.

Jill Reckless

Chief Executive Officer, RxCelerate Ltd

In April 2013, Jill Reckless co-founded RxCelerate Ltd with David Grainger, an out-sourcing drug discovery and development platform, which specialises in providing complete preclinical and clinical development programmes to the pharmaceutical and biotech sector. RxCelerate focuses on delivering the highest quality cutting edge research and development capabilities, at the same time as cutting costs and timelines for client companies of all sizes.

As Chief Executive Officer, Jill provides extensive leadership within the business (currently 38 employees). She offers an insightful strategic vision and manages business development globally. As Chief Scientific Officer, Jill also oversees drug development programmes and clinical trials that are carried out for external clients.

In April 2018, RxCelerate acquired Cambridge based specialist Contract Research Organisation Total Scientific Ltd. In May 2018, RxCelerate further acquired The Cambridge Partnership, which specialises in providing accountancy, company secretarial and IP management to assist in supporting small biotech companies.

Previously, Jill was an academic in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge until December 2011, having completed her PhD at the National Heart and Lung Institute in London. Her research career has been involved in the development of novel anti-inflammatory drugs by investigating the molecular mechanisms responsible for chronic inflammation and disease, both within the University as a Senior Research Associate and as part of Funxional Therapeutics and Epsilon-3 Bio as Head of Biology.

Andy Richards

Andy is an entrepreneur and investor with an established track record in founding and scaling up innovative Biotech and Healthtech companies in the UK. He is currently Chairman of Arecor, Congenica, Abcodia, Closed Loop Medicine and is a Director of Owlstone Medical, Ieso Digital Health, Cancer Research Technology (commercial board of CR-UK) and The Scale Up Institute. He is an advisor to several investment funds including Cambridge Innovation Capital and the UCL Technology Fund and was, until recently, a director of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. 

Andy is a Cambridge Graduate with a PhD in Chemistry and an early career spanning positions with ICI (now AstraZeneca) and PA Technology. He was a founder and executive director of Chiroscience plc until its merger with Celltech in 1999 and since that time he has founded, invested in and helped to scale more than 25 innovative ventures including companies such as Vectura, Arakis, Cambridge Biotechnology Ltd and Geneservice. Andy is also a founder member of the Cambridge Angels. He received a CBE for services to life-science investment in 2015.

Nicholas Stern

Co-Founder, Cambridge Partners Ltd

Nicholas has over 18 years’ experience in finance, with significant experience advising a wide variety of organisations, ranging from small start-ups through to large multinational organisations. Nicholas co-founded Cambridge Partners Ltd in 2020, after completing 8 years working in global restructuring, corporate finance and lead advisory at PwC. Cambridge Partners provides outsourced financial and strategic support to companies to help them navigate through their start-up and growth phases.

Nicholas has held a number of CFO positions in both tech and manufacturing, and he has significant experience working with venture and private equity backed companies. Nicholas also holds a number of non-executive roles with a wide range of companies, working closely with management teams to develop and deliver on their strategic objectives. Nicholas is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, having trained at Saffery Champness in London. From a bio-tech and life sciences perspective, Nicholas has advised a number of the large pharmaceutical companies on matters ranging from financial compliance through to carve-out planning and restructuring.

Outside of work, Nicholas has a real passion for music and audio recording having spent a few years working in the music industry as a songwriter.

Kai Stoeber

Senior Director, External Innovation Lead, World Without Disease Accelerator / Lung Cancer Initiative

Kai Stoeber is Senior Director, External Innovation at Johnson & Johnson Innovation. Prior to joining J&J Innovation, he was Vice President, Global Innovation at the Japanese pharmaceutical company Shionogi. He received his MSc in Biological Sciences from the University of Bonn and his PhD from the University of Cambridge. In academia he had successful tenures at Cambridge and UCL where his research focused on cell-cycle control of DNA replication and cell division. He identified new drug targets and cancer biomarkers commercially developed by start-up and biopharmaceutical companies. He is an advocate for open innovation and open science, is experienced in establishing and coordinating private-public partnerships, and has led projects designed to accelerate research towards medical advancements by forging close collaborative academia-industry interactions. In his current role he identifies and evaluates external opportunities, in partnership with the J&J Global External Innovation network, to accelerate the development of an innovative portfolio of projects, assets and solutions in support of disease prevention, interception and cure.

Nick Tait

Group CFO, RxCelerate

Nick is the Group CFO of RxCelerate, and also is managing director of its Cambridge Partnership subsidiary, which provides the finance, investor relations, and administrative function for many virtual biotech companies. He has over 25 years’ experience in a wide range of financial roles.

Nick was educated in Cambridge at the Perse school, and graduated from the University of Warwick with a degree in Economics in 1993. He trained with Ernst & Young (EY) in London, qualifying as a Chartered Accountant in 1998.

From 2015 to 2019, he has been Associate Director of Denovo Partners Ltd, helping Technology and Life Science SMEs set-up, grow and manage their finance, HR and administrative burdens. 

Nick is also a Non-Executive Director at Cambridge Healthcare Research Ltd.

Nick is a keen tennis player, a very average golfer, and enjoys good food and fine wine.

Anne Tiney

Vice President, Human Resources, Mission Therapeutics Ltd

With an HR background gained in various drug discovery organisations, Anne joined Mission Therapeutics in 2016 as Vice President, Human Resources.  Operating as a strategic business partner Anne helps to create and deliver HR programmes and initiatives to assist in achieving and sustaining business results. 

Prior to joining Mission, Anne provided an HR consultancy service to various drug discovery organisations including Syntaxin (part of the Ipsen group) and prior to that her roles included heading up the HR function at Adaptimmune and 7 years as HR Director at Prosidion, the UK diabetes and obesity subsidiary of OSI Pharmaceuticals.   

Her earlier HR experience includes roles at Evotec AG and Abbott Diabetes Care.

Rebecca Todd

Investment Director, Longwall Ventures

Rebecca began venture investing in 2006 while at Oxford Capital, where she took responsibility for the Oxford Gateway Funds’ investments into healthcare and life science companies, and went on to become Director, Healthcare Ventures at Imperial Innovations (now Touchstone Innovations).

Her earlier career was as a marketing consultant to pharmaceutical and life science technology companies. Rebecca has a PhD in Genetics from Nottingham University and an MBA from Oxford University.

She joined Longwall Ventures after a couple of years sabbatical break spent exploring South America in a VW camper van and focuses predominantly on medical technology opportunities.

Neil Torbett

COO, PhoreMost

Neil is an experienced biotechnology professional with over 15 years of research and management experience in the biotechnology industry.

Prior to PhoreMost, Neil co-founded Activiomics Ltd, a proteomics spin-out from Bart’s Cancer Institute. He served as Chief Operating Officer of Activiomics until its acquisition by Retroscreen Virology (now hVIVO) in 2014 after which he was engaged in the establishment of R&D activities at hVIVO as Director of Discovery Research.

Previously, Neil worked at Piramed Pharma, where he was involved in the management of a successful research collaboration with Genentech focused on the discovery and development of PI3-kinase inhibitors for cancer. Piramed was sold to Roche in 2008.

Neil holds a BSc in Biology from the University of York and a PhD from the Protein Phosphorylation laboratory at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute after which he completed postdoctoral training at the University of California San Francisco Cancer Center. In 2019 Neil was awarded his MBA from The Open University.

Chris Torrance

Chief Executive Officer, PhoreMost Ltd 

Dr Chris Torrance is a cancer researcher and entrepreneur. In 2007 he founded Horizon Discovery to translate advances in human genome editing into a range of research tools and services to accelerate the discovery of new and improved ‘Personalized Medicines’, including the identification of novel drug targets for pharmaceutical development. By 2014 Dr Torrance and his colleagues had built Horizon into the fastest growing Biotech company in the UK. In the same year, the company listed on the London Stock Exchange with over 100 commercial and scientific staff and significant deal-flow with the pharmaceutical Industry, for which Horizon received the Queens Award for International Trade in 2012.

Previously, Dr Torrance was Head of Oncology and Biology at the UK Biotechnology company Vernalis PLC (LSE: VER), where he was responsible for progressing several novel kinase oncology programs.

Dr Torrance has a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Technology from Sheffield Polytechnic; a PhD in Biochemistry from East Carolina University (U.S.A) and completed Post-Doctoral training in the laboratory of Professor Bert Vogelstein at the Johns Hopkins University (U.S.A), where he pioneered the use of ‘X-MAN’ isogenic disease models in high-throughput screening and drug discovery. 

In 2014, Dr Torrance and Dr Venkitaraman (Cambridge University) founded PhoreMost Ltd to develop a new technology platform solution to the next big issue in delivering Personalized Medicine, which is developing a toolbox of therapies big enough and affordable enough to impact the diverse array of key targets in cancer and other complex diseases, most of which are intractable to current drug discovery technologies.

Abel Ureta-Vidal

Investment Director, CMS Ventures

Spanish-born, French-educated, British-inspired entrepreneur, I am a scientist, serial entrepreneur, accomplished C-suite executive, data strategist, mentor/coach and investor with decades of experience in life sciences, more specifically in genomics, and digital fields.

I am the founder of a data and software company, Eagle Genomics, incorporated in 2008 shortly before graduating from the Cambridge Judge Business School MBA. For the 12 years of that journey, I have been the driving force within the executive team at Eagle Genomics, supporting the strategy and partnership activities as well as setting-up a world-class company able to adapt to market demand. This has enabled the company to extend its activities horizontally from the traditional pharma/biotech sector into plant breeding, animal health, consumer goods and food safety.

I exited Eagle Genomics in early 2020 and joined CMS Ventures as investment director, bringing my entrepreneurial experience, life sciences & digital expertise to unearth the most exciting and innovative startups in the UK ecosystem. I am currently involved in coaching startups and mentoring founders in my network and securing non-executive directorships. Finally I also found the time to co-found another startup and the Chief Data Officer at Sofi Health aiming to disrupt the consumer plant-based wellness sector.

Malti B Vaghela

Consultant, Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

Malti is a Consultant at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting firm, with a particular focus on Healthcare. Her experience spans performance turnaround, transformation, regulatory, growth and commercial market strategy and has advised clients across Biopharma, CDMO, MedTech and Provider. 

Paul Wallace

CBO, Mission Therapeutics Ltd

Paul has over 25 years’ leadership experience in business development. Currently he is CBO for Mission Therapeutics, a VC/corporate venture backed UK pharmaceutical company. Previously he was EVP for a publicly-listed European pharmaceutical company during its transition from an early-stage biotech to a profitable company with commercial sales.

He has a track record of leveraging platform technologies and R&D assets to grow and sustain companies. He has led the execution of multiple partnerships: to a total value of $4.5B, the majority with major pharma and consistently at the leading edge of deal trends. Two partnerships have resulted in drugs reaching the market, including the blockbuster Olysio®. He has been a member of executive teams that have raised over $200M.

Paul had an initial research career and is the inventor of two antibody therapeutics in late stage development for cancer indications. He carried out his PhD and postdoc in biochemistry at the University of Cambridge.

David Weston

David Weston, Associate Director of Emerging Innovations

David is an Associate Director in AstraZeneca’s Emerging Innovations Unit, where he is responsible for driving entrepreneurial activities and identifying game-changing technologies for use across R&D. A neuroscientist by training, David holds a PhD in Molecular Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge, where he investigated the structure and function of ligand-gated ion channels in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms. Prior to joining AZ, David was a strategy consultant for PwC’s Strategy& where he advised Life Sciences companies and public organisations on topics related to R&D strategy, M&A, pricing and market access, and growth strategy. David maintains an active network in Cambridge, London and beyond and interacts with numerous start-ups, particularly within the digital health space. He is also interested in entrepreneurship and understanding how pharma can support innovation.

Anna Williamson

Anna Williamson is a Director of Business Development at Roche Pharma Partnering and the Head of Roche’s Cambridge Innovation Hub providing business development support to both Roche and Genentech.

Anna joined Genentech’s Business Development group in 2004 and was based in San Francisco before moving to Cambridge in 2016 to establish a partnering presence in the UK initially for Genentech, and more recently for both Genentech and Roche. Anna holds a BA in Natural Sciences and a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge and carried out post-doctoral research at the University of Colorado and the University of California, San Francisco.

Marcus Yeo

CEO, DefiniGEN

Dr Marcus Yeo is a founder and CEO of DefiniGEN. He is an experienced Company Director and life scientist who took the Oxford-based diagnostics biotechnology company Cybersense Biosystems Ltd to acquisition in 2008 by the FTSE 100 company Severn Trent. He oversaw the integration of the business into the Severn Trent ISO 17025 structure and led sales and marketing of the Severn Trent analytics division. Marcus previously worked for the University of Oxford company Zyoxel Ltd (now CN Bio Innovations), which markets advanced 3D human tissue culture systems to the investigative toxicology drug discovery sector. He specialised in the development of next-generation stem cell derived liver toxicology products and disease modelling systems for drug discovery lead optimisation. He has a PhD in Molecular Biology and is an accredited European Commission Technology Expert who has managed in excess of £15m of R&D funding.