Joined up thinking for data access

Arash Angadji

CEO, Orthopaedic Research UK

Arash joined Orthopaedic Research UK - previously known as the Furlong Research Charitable Foundation - in 2008 and was appointed Chief Executive in 2016. Over the years he has been instrumental in the strategic development and rebranding of the organisation, with a focus on improving Governance and expanding the research and education programmes within the charity. He is an agile leader by nature and has a strong desire to develop strategic partnerships within the MSK community and beyond, in order to accelerate innovation and maximise impact in society. Arash has a PhD in Medical Engineering, MBA in Management and is a trustee at the British Orthopaedic Research Society (BORS).

Steve Bates OBE

Chief Executive Officer

What does your role at BIA involve?

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.

Previous experience & achievements

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.

Claire Bloomfield

Director, NHS England’s Centre for Improving Data Collaboration

Dr. Claire Bloomfield is the Deputy Director of the NHS England’s Centre for Improving Data Collaboration. As the Senior Responsible Officer for the Data for Research and Development programme, Claire oversees development and delivery of the Transformation Directorate’s coordinated investments in health data for R&D, to support the ambitions of the Life Sciences Vision, Vision for future of UK Clinical Research Delivery and Genome UK. Her team supports investments to enable R&D and innovation using health data with a goal to improve patient care, including clinical trials operations and infrastructure investment in Trusted Research Environments. Claire previously worked as CEO in the UK National Consortium of Intelligent Medical Imaging at the University of Oxford — a launchpad to improve the healthcare industry through the development and use of AI. As CEO Claire successfully managed partnerships with 14 NHS hospitals, clinical leaders, industry experts, academic researchers, patient groups and charities. Claire held research fellowships at the University of Oxford and the University of Maryland School of Medicine, after finishing her DPhil at Oxford. Claire’s particular interest in health data research focuses on supporting the ecosystem to develop effective collaborations that generate value for all stakeholders, and ensuring equity and diversity in both the development and application of healthcare innovations to improve care.

Silvia Cerolini

Head of Innovation, Sanofi UKIE

Silvia Cerolini is the Head of Innovation and Go-to-Market Transformation Specialty Care for Sanofi UKIE, bringing over 18 years of extensive experience in digital and omnichannel transformation within the consumer goods and pharmaceutical industries. Her expertise lies in leveraging data and technology to enhance healthcare applications. Silvia is deeply passionate about improving the experiences of patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs) through the strategic integration of data, digital solutions, and artificial intelligence. In her current role, Silvia spearheads the development of algorithms aimed at supporting patient diagnosis and the implementation of innovative digital health solutions. Beyond her corporate responsibilities, Silvia is the founder and CEO of Eyes on the Future, a UK based non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating research on Inherited Retinal Dystrophies (IRD), which cause progressive sight loss in children. Silvia's personal connection to the cause is profound, as her 10-year-old daughter has been diagnosed with an untreatable form of IRD, leading to gradual vision loss. Her efforts have resulted in multiple scientific publications and significant advancements in various therapeutic approaches, ranging from drug repurposing to gene therapy.

Dev Churamani

Strategic Partnerships Manager, Our Future Health

Dev is a Strategic Partnerships Manager at Our Future Health, where he leads on identifying, securing and supporting new partnerships in the non-commercial sector that support the delivery of Our Future Health’s research vision and ambition. Our Future Health will be the UK’s largest ever health research programme, designed to enable the discovery and testing of more effective approaches to prevention, earlier detection and treatment of diseases. Prior to joining Our Future Health, Dev worked at Wellcome, as a strategy development manager where he led on the establishment and continued relationship management of several strategic partnerships. These partnerships include the EPSRC, HDR UK, the Francis Crick Institute and Wellcome Sanger Institute.

Joe Day

Business Development Executive, Cancer Research Horizons

Joe Day is a Business Development Executive at Cancer Research Horizons, the Innovation Engine for Cancer Research UK. He leads a small team focussed on AI and Data collaborations which includes supporting Cancer Research UK funded researchers to maximise the impact of their research data through enabling commercial data sharing and working with AI/tech community to establish collaborations with CRUK network in the data, drug discovery and clinical space. Joe has been at CRUK for 6 years with the last 3 focussed on building the commercial strategy in AI and Data and before that completed a masters in Biochemistry.

Harjeet Dhaliwal

Deployment Strategist, Palantir Technologies UK

As a strategist, Harjeet is focused on bringing the transformational power of data and technology to bear against complex problems in healthcare and other sectors. Harjeet spent 20 years with the National Health Service, most recently as Deputy Director of Data Services at NHS England. Here she led on building a national data repository, broadly used by the NHS and government to look at Covid trends to monitor the spread of the virus and implement measures to ensure services and support is available to patients. Harjeet has been involved with the NHS at a local, regional and national level focused on data, informatics and business intelligence to support better decisions and improve patient outcomes.

Sergio Diaz

Patient Advocacy Manager, IQVIA

Sergio leads on patient advocacy strategy in Europe to incorporate patient-driven research, and has extensive experience engaging and building partnerships between with patient organisations, industry and healthcare providers. He has worked on disease specific patient registry design and implementation for Patient Organisations and Not-for-profits, and implemented patient-voice inclusion and co-creation process in R&D.

Steve Gardner

CEO and Co-Founder, PrecisionLife

Steve is a serial technology entrepreneur with over 30 years’ experience developing and commercializing ground-breaking data science and informatics in the healthcare, life sciences and agri-food sectors. Never afraid to innovate, Steve has an established track record in building world-class companies, teams and products working at senior levels in the UK, EU and US for Fortune 500 and start-up companies. He is a former Global Director of Research Informatics for Astra A/B and has consulted with drug discovery and safety teams in over 20 biopharma companies.

Sonja Lawrence

Head of Business Development, Proven Connect

Sonja Lawrence is the Head of Business Development at Proven Connect. Sonja works with Jayne to help identify and support companies that could impact prostate cancer. Sonja has worked within the charity sector since 2001, developing partnerships and creating new ways for charities to support communities.

Andrew Leach

Interim Head of Data Sciences, LifeArc

After early-career academic positions at UCSF and the University of Southampton, Dr Andrew Leach joined GSK, where for more than 20 years he was involved in the development and application of new platform capabilities for drug discovery in areas including computational chemistry and cheminformatics, fragment-based drug discovery, drug safety, structural biology and proteomics. In 2016 he joined the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) where as Head of Chemical Biology he has overall responsibility for the EBI’s resources in chemogenomics and small molecule entities. He is also Head of Industry Partnerships for EMBL-EBI. Since late 2022 he has also been Interim Head of Data Sciences at LifeArc.

Melanie Lee

CEO, LifeArc

Prior to that Melanie pursued a 30 year career in healthcare R&D and gained leadership experience both from the biopharmaceutical industry and from the medical research charity sector. Melanie’s previous roles have included Chief Scientific Officer at BTG, as well as senior positions at GSK, Celltech and UCB. She has previously held Trustee appointments at Cancer Research Technology, Cancer Research UK, and Sanofi.

Wen Hwa Lee

CEO and Chief Scientist, Action Against Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Dr Wen Hwa Lee (Lee) is CEO and Chief Scientist at Action Against Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AAAMD), a research charity focused on tackling the leading cause of legal blindness in developed world at its earliest stages with maximum affordability and accessibility. Lee is a molecular and structural biologist with a wide international network in drug discovery, including charities, academia, industry, and government agencies. Previously at the University of Oxford, Lee is an experienced leader in setting up partnerships and alliances with multiple stakeholders to accelerate discoveries for drug discovery. He designed and implemented several strategies in two of the largest and most successful international public-private partnerships for drug discovery – the Structural Genomics Consortium and the European Lead Factory. Along with his scientific endeavours, Lee also advised high-level government representatives from different countries and charitable institutions on policy and strategy to integrate scientific, societal, and economic impact. Presently Lee also chairs the INSIGHT Hub’s Data Trust Advisory Board (DataTAB), jointly developed with the Open Data Institute to bring in public and patients at Governance level for a transparent, fair, and accountable use of health data.

James Peach

CEO, Human Centric Drug Discovery

James is CEO of Human Centric Drug Discovery, an Oxford University spin-out using more human data to improve CNS drug discovery. He also advises CRUK and ABPI on commercial access to UK health data. James started his career in consulting, working with McKinsey. He then set up a cancer genetic and clinical database with CRUK, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and then set up Genomics England, focussing on sequencing and sample acquisition. He has worked in the UK Catapult system on sample and data access for UK SMEs, and as commercial director for HDRUK’s cancer data hub, as well as various pharma/techbio consulting projects. His passion is working with patients to increase the legitimate use of health data for research.

Nicola Perrin

CEO, AMRC

Her background is in policy, strategy and engagement. Nicola was at Wellcome for fifteen years, where she led the policy team. She has had a particular focus on ensuring responsible use of patient data, including establishing the Understanding Patient Data initiative. Nicola was a Trustee of AMRC from 2014-2019 and was awarded an MBE in New Year’s Honours 2020 for services to science.

Jayne Spink

Translational Research Director, Proven Connect

Dr. Jayne Spink is the Translational Research Director for Proven Connect. Jayne is responsible for supporting the best commercial research to obtain the financial investment, professional support and resources to benefit men with prostate cancer. Jayne has over a decade of experience in the third sector in engaging patients and patient advocacy. Jayne is a member of the patient advisory council to the ABPI.

Joe Watts

Head of Cross-Government Data Strategy, NHS

Dr Joseph Watts is Head of Cross-Government Data Strategy, Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England. He is responsible for driving forward the departments ambitions in genomics and genomic-based healthcare, collaborating with industry, academia, the NHS and Genomics England. Prior to joining the Civil Service he was a research scientist, specialising in medicinal chemistry and structure-based drug-design. He is continually seeking ways to improve policy and delivery within Government based on a sound understanding of the subject matter and rigorous use of data and analytics. In his previous role as Head of Regional Testing Sites, NHS Test & Trace for the Department of Health and Scoial Care he delivered a network of ~50 drive through testing sites and more than 400 Covid testing facilities nationwide. Dr Joseph Watts holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry "The Synthesis of A-Ring Fluorinated Bile Acid Analogues" and MChem both awarded from the University of Southampton.