TechBio UK 2024

Kristen Albright

CEO, Prokarium

Kristen Albright is the CEO of Prokarium, a privately held London-based biotech with the vision of creating living cures for difficult-to-treat cancers. Prior to Prokarium, Kristen was an investor at Osage University Partners, where she led several early-stage investments into life sciences companies. Earlier in her career, she worked within business development and M&A at Emergent BioSolutions and Cangene Corporation. Kristen started her industry career at Centocor and earned her Doctor of Pharmacy from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and MBA from Saint Joseph’s University. 

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Chris Baker

Investment Principal, LifeArc Ventures

Chris joined LifeArc as Investment Principal at LifeArc Ventures in 2021. He is responsible for new investments and managing existing portfolio companies.

Chris has held key business development roles in the investment and charity research industries, sourcing, assessing and converting life science opportunities. Previously, he was an Associate at the trans-Atlantic venture investor Advent Life Sciences, leading the diligence on a range of therapeutic and medical device opportunities, and supporting the growth of several portfolio companies.

Chris worked for 10 years in the university technology transfer sector with UCL Business and Cancer Research Technology. He successfully supported and commercialised a number of oncology and gene and cell therapy opportunities, and in addition, he was involved in executing a number of strategic initiatives such as the CRUK Stratified Medicine Programme and Grand Challenge awards.

Chris received his M.Biochem from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Genetics from the University of Cambridge in the lab of Prof. Fiona Watt.

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Steve Bates

Chief Executive Officer

Steve Bates is the CEO of the UK Bioindustry Association, the UK’s Trade Association for innovative life science companies with over 550 members. Steve is the visible face of the vibrant UK life sciences industry to government and media. He serves on the UK Government’s Life Sciences Council and the UK Biosecurity Leadership Council. Steve was a founder member of the UK Government’s Vaccine Taskforce in the Covid crisis, sitting on its steering Board alongside Kate Bingham. He is active member and former chair the International Council of Biotech Associations and has been a board member of EuropaBio since 2015.

Steve has championed, with government, effective industrial incentives like the Biomedical Catalyst, which have crowded in private sector investment into UK SMEs. He is a driving force behind the scale up agenda, spearheading policy agenda to unlock UK pension fund capital into productive UK growth in life sciences. He has forged several links for the sector across the USA, Europe and in China. In his time at the BIA, Steve has developed new member groups focused on cell and gene therapy, genomics and engineered biology. A strong advocate of partnership working, Steve champions sector collaboration with research charities and academia. Proud to lead an organisation with a diverse Board with over 40% female representation, Steve is committed to next generation talent and developing the skills needed for the sector to flourish. Before joining the BIA in 2012, Steve worked for Genzyme and was advisor to the UK Government of Tony Blair working on NHS reform and the Northern Ireland peace process. He was made OBE for services to innovation in 2017 and became a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Science in 2020.

: stevebatesuk
: @SteveBatesUK

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Linda Bedenik

Senior Policy and Public Affairs Manager, BIA

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Simon Bornschein

CEO & co-Founder, Coding Bio

Dr. Simon Bornschein is the co-founder and CEO of Coding Bio, a startup advancing immunotherapies by combining high throughput screening and machine learning. With a PhD in cancer immunology from the University of Leuven, Simon previously developed CAR therapies at Celyad and Quell Therapeutics, focusing on oncology and autoinflammatory diseases.

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Leigh Brody

Investment Manager, AlbionVC

Leigh, who holds a PhD in biochemistry and boasts over a decade of experience as a startup founder and operator, is an investor on the UCL Technology Fund life sciences team.

The fund is a partnership between AlbionVC and UCL Business. It sees unique IP created at the London university spun out, helping to ensure that academic innovations are given the chance to transform lives.

Leigh joined the team in 2021 after pursuing her own startup career. The investment manager initially led a spin-out based around her own novel technology, before helping to build several early-stage life science companies. These include Desktop Genetics and Quell Therapeutics.

Today Leigh focuses on transformative technologies and therapeutics opportunities emerging from UCL. The investor deploys her experience as an academic and founder to select innovators with potential. Leigh knows what specific support spin-outs require, and delivers this for the fund. 

Leigh gained her PhD from Imperial College London, and also holds a BSc in Biochemistry from Simmons University. She has also been awarded of 50 Movers & Shakers in BioBusiness, 35 under 35: Tech Entrepreneurs.

Whenever Boston-born Leigh isn’t running after her two children, she is most likely to be found racing around a running track – ideally with a finish line near somewhere offering good food and wine. The investor dedicates her free moments to pursuing her side hustles, which include formulating a skincare line and writing a children’s book. She also finds time to mentor STEM programs for young people.

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Aline Charpentier

Head of Innovation, Bruntwood SciTech

Aline is the Head of Innovation for Bruntwood SciTech Melbourn Science Park, working on establishing it as a thriving ecosystem for TechBio companies. Aline’s experience covers a wide range of support to entrepreneurs in life sciences, having developed Bioentrepreneurs bootcamps across Europe, established the One Nucleus Virtual Innovation Centre for growing companies and now advising an early stage therapeutics fund, BioTranscript. Prior to joining the Cambridge ecosystem, she worked on technology transfer programmes for the scientific services of the French Embassy in the USA (Boston) and technology scouting at the CEA (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique). She holds a MSc in Molecular Biology from the University of Toulouse and MBA from Grenoble School of Management.

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Bianca De Blasi

Senior Data Scientist, Citeline

Bianca De Blasi is a Senior Data Scientist at Citeline, a Norstella company and holds a Master’s of Engineering (MEng) degree in Bioengineering from Imperial College London and a PhD in Computational Biology from University College London (UCL). Following her PhD, Bianca started her career as an Associate Data Scientist at IXICO, a contract research organization (CRO) specialised in Neuroscience and medical imaging analysis, and progressed to specialise as a Medical Imaging Data Scientist. During her tenure at IXICO, Bianca developed, deployed, and supported several applications for enabling and streamlining medical image analytic and predictive modelling in clinical trials, including leveraging Deep Learning (DL) for segmenting medical images more accurately and reliably at scale.

Bianca then joined Citeline as a Clinical Data Scientist, where she contributed to the development and deployment of predictive and prescriptive analytics solutions to streamline and accelerate clinical trial planning and execution strategies, “from pipeline to patient”, such as Citeline SmartSolutions. She leveraged a range of advanced analytics solutions for these use cases, spanning statistical to Machine Learning (ML) to DL to Generative AI (GenAI)-powered solutions. During her tenure at Citeline, Bianca was promoted to Senior Data Scientist and also helped with designing and maintaining such advanced clinical analytics solutions end to end, in continuous cross-functional collaboration. Bianca is passionate about discovering patterns in complex data by applying ML and DL to advance healthcare and clinical trials to ultimately benefit the development and delivery of life-saving and life-enhancing treatments to the patients who need them.

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Ramesh Durvasula

Senior Vice President, Information Officer, R&D IT, Eli Lilly and Company

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Rafael E Carazo Salas

Founder and CEO, CellVoyant

Rafael Carazo Salas is Professor and Chair of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Bristol, and Founder and CEO of CellVoyant, an AI-first biotech company with a mission to accelerate the development of life-changing cell therapies that cure disease. Rafael did a PhD at EMBL Heidelberg and postdoctoral work with Sir Paul Nurse in London and the Rockefeller University in New York before holding independent PI positions in ETH Zurich and at the Gurdon Institute in the University of Cambridge.  With over 25 years of interdisciplinary research experience, he has provided key contributions to the cell and systems biology fields and is a prominent figure in the field of bioimaging.

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Helena Fraser

Vice President, Life Sciences & Healthcare, HSBC Innovation Banking

Helena is a banking professional with over 17 years of experience within the Financial Services sector. In 2016 Helena joined the Life Sciences and Healthcare team at HSBC Innovation Banking. In her current role as VP, Helena works with a pioneering group of clients who strive to make scientific advancements across the BioTech, Diagnostic and Tools ecosystem. This includes supporting clients throughout their growth journey from seed stage through to IPO.

HSBC Innovation Banking is the financial partner of choice to the innovation economy, providing tailored financial solutions designed to meet the needs of the most innovative founders and investors.

Helena was born and raised in Hackney and holds an MSc in Psychology with an active interest in researching subjects that are often stigmatised including the menstrual cycle. During her spare time Helena enjoys Pilates, creating art and experiencing different cuisines. 

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Steve Gardner

CEO & Co-founder, PrecisionLife Ltd

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Davide Gianni

Senior Director Functional Genomics in Discovery Sciences, BioPharmaceuticals R&D, AstraZeneca

Dr. Davide Gianni is Senior Director Functional Genomics in Discovery Sciences, BioPharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca and is responsible for leading a department comprising of scientists whose aim is to deliver new therapeutic opportunities for Astrazeneca’s therapy areas of interest. Davide joined AZ from Boehringer-Ingelheim in 2015 where, acting as a Research Laboratory Head, he has led a team of scientists aimed at identifying and validating novel target opportunities for Oncology. Earlier in his career, he conducted his postdoctoral studies at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla (California) where he focused his research activities on deciphering the contribution of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) in mechanisms underlying human diseases including cancer, neurodegeneration and cardiovascular disease. Davide has authored >25 publications and has co-edited the first dedicated Special Issue on Functional Genomics for SLAS Discovery journal. He has played a key role in initiating the partnership with MRC and University of Cambridge for the creation of the Functional Genomics Screening Laboratory (FGSL). He is a member on the MRC advisory board for the UK Functional Genomics Initiative, a JMC member for the Joint AZ/CRUK Functional Genomics Centre and now a member of the JSC for the FGSL. Finally, Davide has been recognized multiple times in his career for his strong scientific contributions to advance biomedical research (2009 Young Scholar Award from the Alzheimer’s association San Diego, the 2013 Boehringer-Ingelheim Golden Award for the discovery of innovative drugs for cancer patients and the 2020 SLAS Discovery Excellence Award).

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Anta Gkelou

Partner, Sofinnova Partners - Capital Strategy

Anta is a Partner in the Sofinnova Capital Strategy. She joined us in 2017. Previously, Anta was an immunology scientist at Danone Nutricia, where she was involved in translational research and development of prebiotic and probiotic products for immune resilience.

Anta completed her PhD at the National Heart and Lung Institute of Imperial College in London in collaboration with Pfizer UK, where she studied the biology of oxidative stress-driven steroid insensitivity in COPD. She continued her post-doctoral studies at the National Institute of Health of France, INSERM, where she investigated the molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate cardiomyocyte function post myocardial infarction at the European Hospital George Pompidou in Paris.

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Rebecca Godfrey

COO , ExpressionEdits

Dr Rebecca Godfrey is the COO at ExpressionEdits, a Cambridge-based biotechnology company optimizing protein expression using AI and proprietary intronization technology. At ExpressionEdits Rebecca provides leadership and strategic direction to all business, financial and operational aspects of the organisation, leading on all commercial partnership activities.

Rebecca’s extensive track record of building highly successful organizations, teams, and systems, covers all stages of the product lifecycle, across a wide variety of therapeutic modalities and in all regions worldwide, including emerging markets. Rebecca has held Director level roles at Eisai and AbbVie and the role of Global Head Regional PV Excellence at Roche. Rebecca’s most recent roles include COO at healthtech start-up, OKKO Health, and Research Chief of Staff for the clinical-stage gene therapy biotech, Freeline Therapeutics (now Spur Therapeutics).

Rebecca also serves as Chair of the Board of Teens Unite fighting cancer and is author of the best-selling book ‘The Leadership Vaccine: Drive innovation, increase efficiency and build resilience in highly regulated industries’.

 

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Julian Gough

Scientist & Entrepreneur; Founder, OutSee and Mogrify

Julian is a techbio entrepreneur and world authority on bioinformatics. He graduated his PhD in molecular biology from Cambridge and was a research fellow at Stanford. Until recently a programme leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Honorary Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bristol. Founder of Mogrify, founder and CEO of OutSee.

Elin Haf Davies

Founder & CEO, Aparito

Dr Elin Haf Davies has 25 years of experience in life science, the majority of which in clinical trials. Clinically at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, academically at University College London and as a regulator at both the MHRA and the EMA. She was part of the paediatric team responsible for implementing the Paediatric Regulation in Europe in 2007. She founded Aparito in 2014 to change the patient experience of clinical trials through digital tools and to develop innovative eCOA and digital biomarker solutions. Aparito was acquired by Eli Lilly and Company in May 2024. Elin Haf is passionate about promoting opportunities for female founders.

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Sara Holland

Partner, Potter Clarkson LLP

No bio provided

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Zahra Jawad

CEO & Founder, Creasallis

Zahra Jawad is the Founder/CEO of Creasallis, an antibody-engineering company improving the penetration of antibody-based drugs into solid tumours. The team have demonstrated this in under 12 months In vivo with a pre-seed VC lead round of $1 million, and are now raising a seed round of $6 million close to closing.  This technology can be used to make novel therapeutics or enhance existing antibodies. Creasallis is based in Babraham, Cambridge. 

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Hazel Jones

CEO, Enhanc3D Genomics

Hazel has significant oncology research experience, both in pharma/biotech and academic/charity sectors. She has a focus on long term strategic planning, both of logistics and scientific deliverables, as well as driving operational change. Hazel brings with her a broad understanding of all stages of drug development. In her capacity as Interim CEO Hazel will lead, scale, and grow the Company’s global business operations. She will also be crucial in delivering the Company’s strategy to commercial and academic partners. Prior to joining Enhanc3D Genomics, Hazel held various roles within AstraZeneca, including Executive Product Director of Clinical Data, and Head of Business Planning and Operations in Oncology R&D. She was also previously Head of Combination Therapies at Cancer Research UK.

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Perman Jorayev

Investor, Amadeus Capital Partners

Perman is an Investor in the Amadeus Early Stage team. Previously, Perman worked at Verve Ventures, establishing their UK office and investing across Health & Bio, AI, Materials, and Quantum.

Perman holds a PhD from University of Cambridge in Chemical Engineering with a research focus on AI-driven autonomous labs for process development. During his PhD, Perman collaborated with multiple pharma companies to develop new drug synthesis workflows.

Perman holds a BSc in Chemistry and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from KAIST, Korea with research experience at EPFL, Switzerland and MIT, USA in carbon capture, live cell protein imaging, crude-oil upgrading, and synthetic chemistry. 

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Will Kay

Director of Product, Isomorphic Labs

Will leads the product team at Isomorphic Labs, a digital biology company working to redefine drug discovery with the power of artificial intelligence. When Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold was launched in 2020 as a solution to the 50-year-old protein folding problem, it represented a watershed moment for computational and AI methods for biology. Will was part of the team at Google DeepMind that spun out Isomorphic Labs to build on the success of AlphaFold, creating a new company with a distinct focus on AI-first drug design and built the product team, platform and data
strategy. Will initially joined DeepMind as an engineer, later he was a product manager with the reinforcement learning, natural language processing and machine vision groups, where he identified key opportunities to leverage AI across Google’s portfolio. He was involved in generating large datasets for research, most notably Kinetics. Will also initiated DeepMind’s efforts in healthcare, creating and launching the Streams product for use by clinicians in the NHS. Prior to his tenure at DeepMind, Will was the founder and CEO of OKMooMoo, a platform offering exclusive deals and itineraries for visitors to London, forging partnerships with leading nightlife venues and tourist destinations. Will completed his undergraduate degree in Physics from Imperial College and has a certificate in ML from MIT.

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Richard Kuo

CEO, Wobble Genomics

Technology lead and innovator for Wobble Genomics. Background in genetics, genomics, neuroscience, sequencing, and bioinformatics. Researcher at the Roslin Institute developing solutions for RNA sequencing based applications. Expert in long read RNA sequencing. Creator and developer of TAMA and the Level-Up technology.

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Adam Laing

CSO, IMU Biosciences

Adam is co-founder and CEO of IMU Biosciences, a London based immune precision immunology company. Focusing on measuring the immune system at massive depth and at unprecedented scale, IMU have developed the technical and analytical approaches required to understand the immune system at the level of the individual patient and are committed to leveraging this understanding to improve therapies though precision medicine. Adam is a systems immunologist with a background in immunogenetics and human immune monitoring. Adam obtained a BSc in immunology from Newcastle university before completing a PhD in Transplant immunology from King’s College London. In 2012 Adam joined professor Adrian Hayday’s lab at the Francis Crick Institute and King’s College London where his work focused on delivering ambitious large scale systems immunology programs and has published a number of high impact papers in the field  and ultimately to the founding of IMU Biosciences in 2021.

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Emma Lawrence

Senior Policy and Public Affairs Manager, BIA

What does your role at BIA involve?
Emma leads BIA's genomics, digital, data and artificial intelligence (AI) policy areas. She engages with members who work in these fields to understand their policy needs. Emma provides the secretariat for BIA's Genomics Advisory Committee (GAC) and looks after the TechBio community as part of this. Emma also leads BIA's influence agenda for these areas, engaging with civil servants and other senior stakeholders.

Previous experience
Prior to joining the BIA, Emma worked at the cross-party think tank Policy Connect on a Cell and Gene Therapy Parliamentary engagement programme. She has previously worked in the biomedical research sector understanding the barriers to accessing human samples and data for research. This included leading engagement at the UKCRC Tissue Directory and Coordination Centre (UCL) and the Immunotherapy Trial Simulation Project (Imperial College London). Emma has a PhD in Immunology from the University of Manchester.

If you could invite any scientist or entrepreneur to dinner, who would it be and why?
Ada Lovelace, the godmother of computer programming because she was the first to recognise that a machine would have uses beyond calculations. We’d chat about maths and 19th-century gossip over cocktails.

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Chang Lu

CSO & cofounder, OutSee

Dr Chang Lu is CSO of OutSee, a Cambridge-based tech-bio company with a knowledge-based, AI-enabled drug discovery platform. OutSee works with biotech and pharma on a service or partnership basis and is currently closing its seed round. Chang is the first author on the company’s proprietary core technology paper and would be happy to discuss the company via [email protected] 

In addition to her role at OutSee, Chang is a visiting fellow at MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences, Imperial College London. She holds a BSc in Mathematics and completed PhD in Biochemistry from Tsinghua University. At OutSee, Chang leads all scientific programs, and provides strategic directions in commercial partnership activities.

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Debora Lucarelli

CTO, Tagomics

Debora is an innovator and leader in the field of genomic technologies with medical applications. She joined Tagomics in the role of CTO at the beginning of 2024. Her expertise in the development and commercialisation of genomics-based platform technologies was most recently demonstrated in her role as CEO of Enhanc3D Genomics, where she led the company through three successful funding rounds, technology development and platform commercialisation. In previous roles Debora led biomarker discovery as Director Biomarker Discovery at Biomodal (formerly Cambridge Epigenetix), directed and managed laboratory operations and large population studies as the Head of Laboratory at the MRC Epidemiology (University of Cambridge) and managed a team to advance Oxford Nanopore’s technology

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James MacDonald

CEO and Co-Founder, Solena Materials Limited

James is the CEO and co-founder of Solena Materials Limited, an IP spin-out from Imperial College London where he developed the technology in his position as a Research Fellow. With a Physics degree from Imperial and a research background in protein structure and synthetic biology, James is leading Solena in commercialising computationally-designed synthetic protein fibres. Using computational design, deep learning, and automation, the company aims to accelerate bespoke materials development. James has industry experience, having worked for a multinational consultancy. He also serves on the Bioindustry Association's Engineering Biology Advisory Committee, offering a blend of technological and commercial insights.

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Debesh Mandal

CEO, Nanograb

Debesh is a founder and the CEO of Nanograb. Debesh's expertise lies in the implementation of molecular simulations having completed a PhD at Imperial College in simulating controlled drug delivery systems. In previous roles, he was the first software hire at the industrial biotech company FabricNano. He founded Nanograb along with PhD supervisor Stefano Angioletti-Uberti, Christopher Lau, Shanil Panara and Dame Professor Molly Stevens in 2023, spinning out from Imperial. Debesh has led the company through successful initial financing and has managed the development of Nanograb's platform that generates the best combination of binders for targeted drug delivery, taking advantage of recent advances in AI for biomolecular modelling as well as bespoke molecular simulations. The company now has an office and lab in Notting Hill, in West London and develops targeted gene delivery vectors.

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Parker Moss

EVP, Corporate Development, Exscientia

No bio provided

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Cassandra Padbury

Associate Director, Cambridge Consultants

Cassandra works with clients across sectors from consumer, FMCG, medical devices, pharmaceutical and industrial and energy to improve business performance by foreseeing change and taking advantage of technology. She has been helping recognise opportunities and realise the value of ideas with over 20 years in R&D and tech consulting, now specialising in strategic advice for engineering biology. As a Project Fellow for the World Economic Forum Bioeconomy Initiative she works with a community to identify challenges and opportunities for globally advancing the bioeconomy towards sustainable commercial activities. She studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and has a DPhil in Cardiovascular Medicine from the University of Oxford and an executive MBA. She has previously worked at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford and alongside a biotech start up at the Babraham Research Institute, Cambridge.

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Emily Pilkington

Director, HSBC Innovation Banking

Emily is a Director in the Global Life Science and Healthcare Team at HSBC Innovation Banking, in London. She supports innovative biopharma & diagnostic clients across the EMEA region and works with founders, C-suite and investors to provide banking and lending solutions that support client innovation and growth. Emily brings over ten years of experience supporting technology and healthcare companies with solutions across corporate banking, leverage finance, and M&A.

Karen Polizzi

Co-Director, Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology

Karen Polizzi is a Professor of Biotechnology in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London, the co-Director of the Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology, Vice Director of the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, and co-director of the National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre.  Her research applies synthetic biology to upstream bioprocess engineering with projects in cell engineering and development of biosensing technology.

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Christopher Reynolds

Founder & CTO, Eden Bio

Dr Christopher Reynolds is an experienced academic turned entrepreneur with sixteen years experience in the fields of AI and synthetic biology, five of them as a startup founder. He co-founded Better Dairy in January 2000 to use strain engineering to produce animal-free dairy and exited two years later, after a £16M Series A. He subsequently founded Eden Bio to bring AI-guided strain engineering to all verticals of the precision fermentation industry, which raised £1M seed funding in November 2022. He holds a holds a PhD in Bioinformatics from Imperial College London, is inventor on a patent for a SIRT2 inhibitor drug, sole developer of the EzMol protein visualisation software, and has authored numerous peer-reviewed papers.

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Alessandro Riccombeni

CEO & Founder, Axia Medicine

Dr. Alessandro Riccombeni is the CEO and founder of Axia Medicine, a patient-centric Personalised Healthcare company. Alessandro has more than 16 years of international experience in business strategy, product development and research. Before creating Axia Medicine, Alessandro led the Precision Medicine investment strategy, sales pipeline and enablement programmes for both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, including the creation of AWS' international Precision Medicine segment and Microsoft's only win in Population Genomics.
Alessandro led the creation of bioinformatics platforms and services for gene editing and multimodal data, including the creation of Big Tech's first original cloud service for Precision Medicine. At DNAnexus, Alessandro led the development of the EMEA market for Pharma and Diagnostics, as part of Andrew Carroll's team.

Alessandro is an advocate for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, with an interest in social mobility and the creation of industry opportunities for young talent from disadvantaged backgrounds. He started his career in research, leading projects in Oncology and Infection Biology. Dr. Riccombeni holds a Ph. D. in Bioinformatics from University College Dublin and an MBA from London Business School.  

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Rory Ryan

Co-Founder & CEO, PentaBind

An experienced MedTech entrepreneur (3X founder; 1 Exit), Rory co-founded PentaBind in November 2021 with Phil Haynes (Drug Research) and Miguel Gonzalez (AI and Data Science). Before this Rory founded a VC-backed aptamer diagnostics company which he ran for 6 years, including 3 years in Shenzhen, China and then exited. Rory also founded Valatoa.com, a software offering exit strategy advice and business valuations to private equity. 9 years in the aptamer industry, inventor of 2 patents and past advisor for a health policy think tank, Rory also holds Master’s degrees in Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Management (Imperial College) and Engineering (University of Leeds).

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Oliver Sexton

Investment Director, Future Planet Capital

Oliver is an Investment Director at UKI2S. Specialising in life science investments he has managed the enlarged £33m engineering biology sub-fund since its inception in 2014. He has invested in a broad range of companies in sectors as diverse as therapeutic, agritech and clean biotech.

He sits on multiple boards and has overseen exits including the £85m sale of Quethera to Astellas. He is also a member of the Future Planet Capital ESG steering group.

Prior to joining UKI2S, Oliver worked at the venture fund Imperial Innovations as well as other roles in the industry. He has a background in strategy analysis and consultancy including roles in New York and has a masters from the University of Bristol and commenced a PhD in bioremediation at the University of Nottingham.

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Noor Shaker

Founder & CEO, SPATIALX

I'm a techbio entrepreneur and AI expert with almost two decades of experience in machine learning that I have been translating to innovations in the life sciences sector. During my tenure as founder and CEO of Glamorous AI, I led the development and commercialization of advanced machine learning for drug discovery that have a significant impact on the productivity of the sector. As a CEO, I led the acquisition of the company by X-Chem Inc., A US-based company specialising in DNA Encoded Library technology. I joined the X-Chem team as the SVP and General Manager of the London site to build and lead the company's AI efforts. I was responsible for everything AI-related from product to commercialisation. In 2023, I founded SpatialX, a company on a mission to cure cancer through this decade's most powerful tool, AI, let's hope we succeed :). 

I have the honour of being globally recognised as an industry thought leader. I actively speak about AI and its immense power in healthcare and life sciences. I gave talks at events organised by MIT, Fortune, BBC and WIRED. I'm the winner of MIT Innovator Under 35, in the 2019 BBC list of 100 women, and among the 100 Asian Women in tech for 2023. I also serve on the Board of Directors of a number of companies and advise the government and academic organisations on issues related to AI, entrepreneurship as well as Diversity and Inclusion.

Prior to starting my entrepreneurial journey, I was an Assistant Professor at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, where I made a significant contribution to the field of procedural content generation, affective computing and computer games. My work led to international recognition as a technology leader, co-authoring the main book on Procedural Content Generation in Games, currently taught by universities internationally, publishing over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and having numerous patents. I served as the Chair of the IEEE Games Committee and my work has won numerous best paper awards. I received a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the IT University of Damascus and a Ph.D. in AI from IT University of Copenhagen.

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Leo Spicer-Phelps

Associate, Cooley (UK) LLP

Leo is an associate in the Cooley Technology Transactions Group. He is technology-focused commercial lawyer who also provides deep expertise in data privacy and AI regulation. His breadth and depth across these areas means he is singularly well-positioned to handle ‘data heavy’ clients and situations. For this reason, the core of his practice is built around supporting clients in verticals that are inherently data intensive:

• Data privacy. Providing counselling expertise in European data privacy – Leo’s practice is deeply transatlantic, and he has particular skill working with US organisations expanding to Europe.
• AI/ML. Counselling clients developing, licensing and integrating a wide variety of general and narrow purpose AI technologies.
• Digital Health. Providing tailored commercial and data privacy guidance to digital health clients (ranging from therapy platforms to AI-enabled diagnostics technologies to AI drug discovery operations).
• InfoSec. Helping developers and users of information security solutions meet the opportunities and regulatory demands in an area of ever-increasing strategic significance.

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Frances Stocks Allen

Partner, Cooley (UK) LLP

Frances' practice focuses on representing public and private life sciences companies and industry investors in the pharmaceutical, biotech, techbio and medical technology sectors on a broad range of matters, including licensing and other complex commercial and intellectual property arrangements.

She provides pragmatic, commercially driven, and digestible advice to help clients achieve their business objectives and strategic goals.

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David T Dexter

Director of Research, Parkinson’s UK

Professor Dexter joined Parkinson’s UK on the 1^st of March 2017 and became Direct of Research on the 1^st of April 2023. David has 37 years research experience in Parkinson’s, 24 years of which was spent at Imperial College London where he was Professor of Neuropharmacology and Deputy Head of The Division of Brain Sciences. His research team made significant contributions into understanding the molecular mechanisms that cause Parkinson’s and in the development of novel therapeutics and founded the Parkinson’s UK Brain Bank in 2002. At Parkinson’s UK he manages the charities grants funding programmes, external research communications and involvement of people affected by Parkinson’s in research. David also manages Parkinson’s UK’s strategic partnerships such as the Critical Path for Parkinson’s etc. and is the biology lead in the Parkinson’s UK Virtual Biotech programme.

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Jody Thelander

Founder & CEO, J.Thelander Consulting

J.Thelander Consulting is headed by Jody K. Thelander, a compensation executive with more than twenty years of professional experience. Jody has a keen understanding of business through a diversified background in compensation, sales and customer service. The Thelander Surveys and Reports have become a well-respected and highly desired tool for compensation decision-makers in the private business sector.

Jody speaks publicly on executive compensation, investment firm and corporate venture compensation topics, including events hosted by PitchBook, NVCA, LaunchBio and Stanford.  She is frequently published as a compensation expert in Axios, Forbes, Fortune and the Wall Street Journal.

Jody earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Consumer Studies at the University of Vermont and a Masters Degree in Human Resources at Marymount University. Her career began in the fashion retailing industry with British Vogue, Ralph Lauren Womenswear, Bonwit Teller and Garfinkels in London, New York and Washington, DC. Jody also spent ten years in human resources with TRW Space and Defense both in Washington DC, and San Francisco, before starting her own firm.

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Morgan Thelander

COO, J.Thelander Consulting

Morgan specializes in client relations and business development for J.Thelander Consulting clients and survey participants.  She has in-depth experience with private companies through her work at PitchBook in Seattle and Healthbox in Chicago. While at PitchBook, Morgan gained expertise in private company deal and financing tracking, as well as contributing to editorial for their daily newsletter and blog posts. She also has keen insights as to how start-ups bring their products to market through her work with the accelerator program at Healthbox. Morgan volunteers at the Jewish Federation in St. Louis as the co-chair of the Young Professional Division. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Morgan has been working alongside Jody for nearly eight years to provide the most reliable, comprehensive, trustworthy compensation data and white glove service to the private capital market. 

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David Venables

CEO , Laverock Therapeutics

Dr David Venables is CEO of Laverock Therapeutics, a gene-silencing company with a uniquely powerful technology which harnesses the cell’s natural gene regulatory mechanisms to develop a new generation of programmable advanced therapies. Prior to this he was President, AskBio Europe, following the acquisition of Synpromics Ltd, where he was CEO. Synpromics was a market leader in gene control and synthetic promoter development. He previously has served as: VP – CMC for NightstaRx, an ophthalmology focused gene therapy company acquired by Biogen; CEO of Anatara Therapeutics which he took through to IPO in Australia; CEO of Ark Therapeutics with responsibility for leading the company through a transition to a viral contract development and manufacturing service model and sale.

He also serves on the Boards of NovalGen, Concinnity Genetics, and Axol Biosciences, and is Honorary Professor at Edinburgh University.

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Hakim Yadi

CEO & Co-Founder, Closed Loop Medicine

Dr Hakim Yadi OBE is a co-Founder and chief executive of Closed Loop Medicine. He joined CLM from the Northern Health Science Alliance Ltd, the pan-Northern health partnership which brought together for the first time 20 research-based NHS hospitals, the North’s Academic Health Science Networks and Universities to collaborate on improving health outcomes across the North.

As the founding CEO of the NHSA, Hakim was instrumental in raising the profile of the region in parliament, with investors and the media to help focus resources on improving healthcare services for the 15 million population living in the North and its eight great cities. Central to the NHSA’s mission was to raise awareness of the region’s high mortality rates and to seek national solutions to improve these morbidity levels by working with all local agencies to improve health – and therefore wealth and well-being -outcomes.

Hakim was also highly successful in working with companies in the North to attract substantial domestic and overseas investment into the region’s life science sector, one of the most vibrant in the country.

Having worked with specialist drug and digital companies all around the world, he has a deep understanding of innovation systems integration. Hakim started his career at PA Consulting, where he co-managed the company’s translational medicine team. During his time at PA, he was seconded to the UK Government where he worked as the Chief Operations Officer and was a founding member of the UK Department of International Trade (DIT) Life Sciences Organisation (LSO).

He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and in 2017 he was awarded an OBE for services to Healthcare Technology and the Economy.

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Sergei Yakneen

Chief Technology Officer, Isomorphic Labs

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Jason Yip

CEO & Co-Founder, Tailor.Bio

Jason Yip is CEO and Co-Founder of Tailor Bio, a pioneering startup that's redefining precision medicine for deadly cancers. Tailor Bio's innovative technology decodes Chromosomal Instability (CIN), a genomic phenomenon found in 80% of cancers, yet often overlooked by current precision oncology approaches. By leveraging cutting-edge computational and AI-enabled techniques, Tailor Bio is pushing the frontiers of precision medicine to create new possibilities for patients in need.

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