Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist based in Mountain View, California, USA, and is the Chief Science Officer of SENS Research Foundation, a California-based 501(c)(3) biomedical research charity that performs and funds laboratory research dedicated to combating the aging process. He is also VP of New Technology Discovery at AgeX Therapeutics, a biotechnology startup developing new therapies in the field of biomedical gerontology. In addition, he is Editor-in-Chief of Rejuvenation Research, the world’s highest-impact peer-reviewed journal focused on intervention in aging. He received his BA in computer science and Ph.D. in biology from the University of Cambridge. His research interests encompass the characterisation of all the types of self-inflicted cellular and molecular damage that constitute mammalian aging and the design of interventions to repair and/or obviate that damage. Dr. de Grey is a Fellow of both the Gerontological Society of America and the American Aging Association, and sits on the editorial and scientific advisory boards of numerous journals and organisations. He is a highly sought-after speaker who gives 40-50 invited talks per year at scientific conferences, universities, companies in areas ranging from pharma to life insurance, and to the public.

Since April 2018 Andrew has been IBM’s Global Life Sciences Industry Leader.

Andrew helps clients address industry imperatives and save lives through the power of cognitive insights. He works with clients to advance the next generation of discovery and development, acting on insights to drive value, enhance relationships across the ecosystem and empowering people to make better decisions.

Andrew was IBM’s Life Sciences Industry Leader for Europe between 2015-2108. Prior to transferring to Europe in July 2015, Andrew was IBM Life Sciences Industry Leader for China for 5 years. While in China Andrew worked with many leading multi-national companies and several Chinese Life Sciences companies who were leaders in their respective segment.

Before joining IBM in 2000, Andrew had a successful 14-year career with a leading strategy consulting company. He graduated from Melbourne University with a Bachelor of Arts, and Monash University (Melbourne, Australia) with a Bachelor of Business. Andrew has a Master of Business Administration from the International University of Japan and is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia. He was a three-term board member on a government enterprise with assets of over $350M. He was a founding director of a successful dot.com start-up in the early 2000s.

Andrew is an advocate of sport and fitness as a gateway to good health. He is passionate about the role of genomics in identifying both the cause of disease and personalized solutions.

Christopher R. Lowe is Professor Emeritus of Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge and was founder Director of the Institute of Biotechnology at the University where he conducted multi-disciplinary research in both diagnostics and therapeutics in the healthcare biotechnology sector. He is a fellow of Trinity College, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has 398 peer-reviewed publications, 8 books and monographs, >100 patents, has supervised >95 PhD students and has a number of national and international prizes: “Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement”; “Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education”; “Most Entrepreneurial Scientist of the UK”; OBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours; BBSRC Commercial Innovator of the Year in 2011.

Besides being a member of a number of Editorial Boards, Funding Bodies and Government Committees, he has been the driving force for the establishment of 12 spin-out companies including ProMetic Biosciences Inc, Cambridge Sensors Ltd, Smart Holograms Ltd, Paramata Ltd, Psynova Neurotech Ltd, LabXero Ltd, TumourVue Ltd and Royale Therapeutics Ltd., has a number of directorships and fosters entrepreneurship within the
University via a Master’s in Bioscience Enterprise, the University’s Seed Fund Committee (Cambridge Enterprise) and other Business School and student-led activities.

He is active in various overseas committees and in a number of legal and entrepreneurial roles. He is currently Director of the newly established Cambridge Academy of Therapeutic Sciences (CATS) within the University of Cambridge.

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.

Ian returned to the UK from Australia where he was Director of the ithree institute, University of Technology, Sydney to take up his role as Director of the Quadram Institute Bioscience (formerly Institute of Food Research) and Founding Director of the Quadram Institute in May 2015.

Ian has over 30 years’ experience in academic and commercial research.  His academic career has included being a founding member of The Wolfson Institute for BioMedical Research at University College London, one the UK’s first institutes of translational medicine. He has worked in the pharmaceutical industry at Glaxo Wellcome, and has founded biotech companies in the area of infectious disease, including Arrow Therapeutics, sold to AstraZeneca in 2007, and Auspherix, a venture capital backed company founded in 2013. He is also a Non-Executive Director for Genus plc.

Ian is an internationally recognised scientist and has expertise in infectious diseases, the microbiome, and its impact on health and wellbeing, genomics and metagenomics.

Jason is a scientist entrepreneur passionate about translating innovative technologies into better patient outcomes. As CEO and co-founder of Start Codon, a Cambridge-based accelerator, he aims to identify and recruit the most disruptive healthcare start-ups worldwide, seed-fund them and leverage the exceptional resources of the Cambridge Cluster to de-risk and drive their success.

Previously, he was CEO of Cambridge Epigenetix which has developed a proprietary epigenetic biomarker discovery platform for the development of new diagnostic assays and the identification of novel drug targets. While at Cambridge Epigenetix, Jason transformed the research tools company into a leading liquid biopsy player and led two successful fundraises (Series B and C) for a total of $51m.

Prior to joining Cambridge Epigenetix, Jason was a Business Development Manager for Horizon Discovery’s diagnostics division where he was responsible for developing and launching new reference standards for genomic clinical assays. He also served as an Associate at Cambridge Enterprise, the technology transfer office of the University of Cambridge, where he managed a broad intellectual property portfolio and fostered new spin-outs.

Jason was awarded a Marshall Scholarship to obtain his PhD in Medicine from the University of Cambridge with a focus on the molecular mechanisms regulating vascular remodeling within coronary artery bypass grafts. He has a BSc (Summa Cum Laude) in Molecular Biology and Chemistry from Tulane University.

Professor Joanne Hackett is the Chief Commercial Officer at Genomics England and lead member of the Business and Investment Committee.
 
As CCO, Joanne is responsible for Genomics England’s industry engagement strategy by developing, managing and accelerating relationships with commercial organisations − creating opportunities for collaboration both nationally and globally.
 
Joanne is a clinical academic and 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.

Genomics England

The time for talking about the potential of genomic medicine is past. Genomics is not tomorrow. It’s here today. Genomics will transform patient outcomes and healthcare systems – and Genomics England is already moving to make a mainstream genomics medicine service a reality in the UK.
Realising this potential fully, however, demands more as this transformation can only take place with deep industry partnerships in place. Kick starting a UK genomics industry has been a core Genomics England aim from the outset. It recognises that − whilst NHS England, Genomics England and others build the data resources, infrastructure and systems − it is industry that develops the medicines, treatments and technologies that have such a big impact on patients’ lives. Genomics is made up of many moving parts − from the understanding and consent of the public, to truly pioneering research, to building an effective clinical service. The time for talking about genomic potential is past. The time to talk to business − and forge partnership on an industrial scale – is now.

John is Co-founder and CEO at Cambridge Cancer Genomics (CCG.ai), a precision AI start-up transforming the ability of oncologists to finally provide effective, personalised cancer treatment for everyone. John holds a PhD in functional genomics from the University of Cambridge and a Masters in Pharmacology from the University of Glasgow. His research career in academia (CRUK) and industry (MedImmune) focused on understanding how tumours evolve and become resistant to treatment. John is actively involved in the biotech startup community as a Venture Partner at the Pioneer Fund, Director of SiliconBio and a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University.

John joined Johnson & Johnson in September 2016. In this role John uses his drug discovery and scientific experience to identify and advance external opportunities in the areas of Alzheimer’s Disease and Mood Disorders.

Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson, since November 2014, John was Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust.  Previous to that he worked at Eli Lilly and Company at their neuroscience research campus near London, UK.  At Lilly he led a team of labs dedicated to identifying new therapies for Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

John’s scientific interests centre on synaptic mechanisms in circuit function, and how dysfunction causes psychiatric and neurological disease.  John obtained a BSc in Pharmacology and Biochemistry at the University of Southampton in 1990 and remained at Southampton for his graduate work, studying mechanisms of epilepsy with Prof Howard Wheal.

In 1994 he joined Dr Robert Malenka’s laboratory at University of California San Francisco working on mechanisms of long-term synaptic plasticity in hippocampus and somatosensory cortex, also in close collaboration with Dr Roger Nicoll.  After completion of this post doc position, John joined Prof Graham Collingridge’s laboratory at the University of Bristol back in the UK in 1996, where he completed a one year post doc before establishing his own lab there. He rose up through the ranks to full Professor before leaving in 2004 to set up a lab at the Intramural Program at NINDS/NIH in Bethesda, MD, USA studying mechanisms and roles of synaptic plasticity in developing cortical circuits.

Dr. Joy Wolfram is an Assistant Professor at Mayo Clinic in Florida, where she leads the Nanomedicine and Extracellular Vesicles Laboratory. She also holds affiliate faculty positions in the Department of Nanomedicine at the Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas, the Department of Biology at the University of North Florida, and the Wenzhou Institute of Biomaterials and Engineering in China. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from the University of Helsinki in Finland. In 2016, she completed her Ph.D. in nanotechnology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the past five years, she has authored over 40 publications and received more than 25 scientific awards from seven different countries. She was included in the Amgen Scholars Ten to Watch List, which highlights the best and brightest up-and-comers in science and medicine across 42 countries. Native of Finland, she was selected as one of 12 internationally accomplished Finns, alongside Nobel laureates. She was also listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 in healthcare in 2019. She is a board member and scientific advisor of several companies around the world with a cumulative customer base of over 18 million. She has designed many preclinical nanoparticles for the treatment of various diseases, including cancer. Her goal is to develop innovative nanomedicines
that bring the next generation of treatments directly to the clinic. Her mission is also to inspire and support underrepresented minorities in science. She is actively involved in community outreach and scientific education, including serving as the co-chair of the Physical Sciences-Oncology Network Education and Outreach Working Group of the National Cancer Institute in the United States. As a TEDx and Hello Tomorrow speaker she strives to bring science to a wider audience.