Dr. Kathryn Chapman is the Deputy Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute, a dynamic partnership between pharmaceutical companies and academics at the University of Cambridge and associated Institutes. Its vision is to transform pioneering science into therapies by connecting the intellectual know-how of entire academic institutions in Cambridge with the drug-developing capacity of the pharmaceutical industry. Its new, purpose-built Research Labs are in the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre which opened in September 2019.

Kathryn has held multiple senior research positions at the University of Manchester, Harvard Medical School, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and GlaxoSmithKline and holds an honorary Professorship at the University of Coventry. Prior to joining the Milner Institute in February 2016, Kathryn was Head of Innovation and Translation at the NC3Rs where she worked with over 40 pharmaceutical companies in the US and Europe in various cross-company data-sharing and open innovation initiatives to improve scientific and business processes in drug development.

Dr. Maria Chatzou Dunford holds a PhD in Biomedicine, MSc in Bioinformatics and BSc in Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics. She is a biotech innovator and a proud geek, with unique expertise in bioinformatics, medical informatics, High Performance Computing, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. A passionate entrepreneur, Dr. Chatzou Dunford has founded two companies: Innovation Forum Barcelona and Lifebit, creators of Deploit and AI Engine — the intelligent cloud-based genomics platform that enables integration and analysis of diverse data to accelerate insights in a safe, FAIR,
reproducible, standardised, and cost effective way. As a researcher at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Dr. Chatzou Dunford designed tools and methods that facilitate the analysis of Big Biomedical Data, enabling biological discoveries and promoting personalised medicine. She was part of the developing team of Nextflow, the programming framework revolutionising the computational analysis of genomic data.

Namshik Han is the Head of Computational Biology group at the Milner Therapeutics Institute in University of Cambridge. He leads the group and has responsibilities to develop and deliver Milner’s computational biology and bioinformatics strategy. The main aim of the group is to develop and apply cutting-edge computational methods, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, fulfilling the global mission of identifying new or better therapies from the analysis of biological data. He read in both Law and Computer Science for Undergraduate and moved into Computational Biology for his Masters degree. After that, he spent 3 years to participate in a software system development project in Samsung Electronics. He then did his PhD at School of Computer Science in University of Manchester (2007-2010). He started his Postdoc works at Faculty of Life Sciences in University of Manchester (2010) and then at Gurdon Institute in University of Cambridge (2013).

Jonathan Ward is the Co-founder & CEO of Genome Biologics, based in Frankfurt Germany and a resident company of Johnson & Johnson Innovation, JLABS@BE.

Genome Biologics identifies pipeline drugs and repositions FDA approved compounds for Cardiovascular and Cardiometabolic Rare Disease. Capitalising on the power of our patented Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven preclinical multi-modality drug testing technology, we leverage the power of AI-based machine learning with transformative patient-derived tissue screens and in vitro and in vivo transgenesis to dramatically reduce the cost, time and inefficiencies of preclinical research.

Jonathan has more than 20 years’ experience in preclinical R&D and toxicology. Jonathan has worked across Europe and Asia, and has held multiple leadership positions, including as HOD at A*STAR Singapore, COO at PWG Genetics Singapore / Korea, Head of Bioresearch at Philip Morris International and more recently as Head of Scientific Administration at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

In the course of his career, he led research programmes in multiple therapeutic areas, including next generation products, managed large research facilities and established partnerships for technology development with multiple pharma / biotech companies and CRO’s.

Jonathan is a stakeholder of The European Quality In Preclinical Data (EQIPD) group, a member of the Royal Society of Biology and the co-founder of Genome Biologics.