TechBio UK

Charlotte Deane

EPSRC Executive Chair

Professor Charlotte Deane MBE is a Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford, Executive Chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Co-Founder of Dalton Tx.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she served on SAGE, the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, and acted as UK Research and Innovation’s COVID-19 Response Director.

In 2025, Charlotte was elected as a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB).

At Oxford, Charlotte leads the Oxford Protein Informatics Group (OPIG), who work on diverse problems across immunoinformatics, protein structure and small molecule drug discovery; using statistics, AI and computation to generate biological and medical insight.

Charlotte’s research focuses on the development of novel algorithms, tools and databases which are openly available to the community. They are widely used in both academia and industry and embedded in pharmaceutical drug discovery pipelines. She is a member of several advisory boards and has consulted extensively with industry, having also established a consulting arm within her research group as a way of promoting industrial interaction and use of the group’s software tools.

Charlotte is part of the team leading OpenBind, a £8 million government-backed consortium aiming to create the world’s largest open dataset of drug-protein interactions to accelerate AI-driven drug discovery. She also serves as one of five experts advising the UK Government’s new AI for Science strategy, which aims to boost AI adoption across research and accelerate scientific discovery.

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Chris Gibson

Co-Founder and CEO, Recursion

Chris Gibson, PhD, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Recursion, a leading clinical stage TechBio company leveraging the latest in automation and AI to decode biology to radically improve lives. Chris developed the technology behind Recursion’s approach as part of his graduate work in the lab of Dr. Dean Li (currently President of Merck Research Labs) at the University of Utah and launched the company in 2013. Now, he has built Recursion into a global AI drug discovery powerhouse with offices in Salt Lake City, New York City, London, Oxford, Toronto, Montreal and the Bay Area; an industry-leading proprietary biological and chemical dataset; the most powerful supercomputer in pharma; active partnerships with leading pharmaceutical companies like Sanofi and Roche and Genentech; and a robust pipeline of clinical-stage assets in oncology and rare disease.    

Chris ‍is dedicated to supporting the next generation of founders. He serves on the Board of BioHive, the public-private partnership driving expansion of Utah's life-science ecosystem. In 2020, he established Altitude Lab, an incubator for healthcare startups, and serves on Altitude’s Board. In 2025, he launched the Chris and Summer Gibson Fellowship to support underrepresented and first-time founders as they transition from academia to entrepreneurship, and the Altitude Lab Fund, a pre-seed venture fund dedicated to supporting the highest impact ideas transitioning from basic research to industry. He is also active as an advisor and mentor, both formally and informally, to many biotech founders.

Chris is a graduate of Rice University with degrees in bioengineering and management. 

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Alan Aberdeen

Co-founder & CEO, Ground Truth Labs

Alan Aberdeen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ground Truth Labs, a company applying AI to decode the bone marrow and generate insights that advance therapeutics. The GTL platform translates complex tissue data into actionable understanding for drug discovery, translational research, and the development of new treatments for blood cancers. Alan’s work has been published in leading journals including HemaSphere, Leukemia, and Blood Advances. He brings a background at the intersection of engineering, AI, and clinical impact.

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Sola Adeleke

Founder & CMO, Curenetics

Sola founded Curenetics, a cancer AI deep-tech company developing models to predict responses to cancer immunotherapy treatments. They also lead in developing next-generation AI-driven cancer vaccines. Sola, an oncologist, completed a PhD at University College London, where he developed imaging-derived biomarkers for predicting cancer responses.

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Pierre Arsène

Founder & CEO, Mursla Bio

Pierre is an experienced biotech entrepreneur and former investment banker with multidisciplinary expertise spanning the full product lifecycle of innovative life sciences technologies. His expertise encompasses roles as a founder, inventor, operator, and advisor, guiding innovations from concept through development to market, securing financing, and contributing to successful exits.

While conducting postgraduate research in biophysics, nanoelectronics, and extracellular vesicles (EVs) at the University of Cambridge, he founded Mursla Bio, pioneering a novel model for spinning out university research while retaining intellectual property. He is the author and inventor of several patents and publications in nanoelectronics and EV characterisation and has received multiple innovation awards, including recognition as a German-French Young Leader under President Macron’s patronage.

Previously, Pierre spent a decade in healthcare investment banking at J.P. Morgan, closing over $70 billion in transactions and becoming the first representative sent to Japan to support global M&A initiatives. His contributions earned him recognition by eFinancialCareers as one of the most impressive Vice Presidents in investment banking.

He holds a Master in Management from HEC Paris and a classe préparatoire specializing in mathematics from Saint-Jean de Douai (equivalent to the undergraduate level).

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John Baker

CEO, IMU Bioscience

Dr. John Baker is Chief Executive Officer of IMU Biosciences, where he is leading the company’s mission to harness AI-driven immune profiling to unlock breakthroughs in precision medicine. Before joining IMU in 2024, John spent eight years at Abcam as part of the Executive Team, guiding the company through rapid global expansion and its $5.7B acquisition by Danaher. Trained as a veterinarian at Cambridge and holding a DPhil in Clinical Medicine from Oxford, he has published on innate immunity and brings deep scientific and leadership experience from roles at Bain & Company and as a Non-Executive Director in biotech.

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Jenny Barnett

Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, Monument Tx

Jenny brings a unique blend of commercial and scientific expertise to drive Monument’s mission to transform neuroscience through precision medicine. Previously Chief Scientific Officer at Cambridge Cognition, Jenny played a pivotal role in establishing Monument Tx as a successful spin-out, securing substantial funding to support its innovative solutions.

Jenny holds an MA in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University and a PhD in Schizophrenia Epidemiology from the University of Cambridge, followed by postdoctoral work at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. She has published over 70 papers, holds six patents, and is an honorary member of Cambridge’s Department of Psychiatry.

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James Bennett

Head of Operations & Partnerships, Coding Bio

James is Head of Operations and Partnerships at Coding Bio, a biotechnology company combining high-throughput functional screening with machine learning to discover and develop next-generation immunotherapies. He leads business development, strategic collaborations, and operational initiatives, helping to translate Coding Bio’s scientific innovations into impactful partnerships and programs.

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Clarisse Beurrier

Co-Founder & CSO, Cellcraft

Clarisse Beurrier is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cellcraft, a B2B company in Cambridge with an AI-biosensor platform that brings meat production into the digital age. By integrating cells, media, bioreactors, and automation, Cellcraft’s technology makes cultivated meat scalable, cost-effective, and differentiated. Cellcraft is building the future of responsible meat production while making sure no one is left behind in the race to reinvent meat, and it gives governments and industry partners a way to strengthen food security through localised, on-demand production. Cellcraft is now raising its Series A to establish pilot scale and deliver on its commercial partnerships. Clarisse holds a MPhil in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology from the University of Cambridge and a BSc in Biological Sciences and Management from Imperial College London. She is also one of the lead authors of the world’s first textbook on cultivated meat.

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Jamie Bignal

Director, Life Sciences & Healthcare, HSBC Innovation Banking

Jamie is a Director in HSBC Innovation Bank’s Life Science & Healthcare team. HSBC Innovation Banking provides commercial banking services, expertise and insights to the technology, life science and healthcare, private equity and venture capital industries. HSBC Innovation Banking UK is a subsidiary of HSBC Group, benefiting from its stability, strong credit rating and international reach to help fuel its growth

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Davide Bommarito

Director, Life Sciences & Healthcare, Early Stage Banking, HSBC Innovation Banking

Davide heads the Life Sciences & Healthcare early-stage vertical at HSBC Innovation Banking in London. He joined HSBC Innovation Banking to expand the bank's healthcare footprint in the UK and to provide commercial banking services to disruptive Biotech, Biopharma and Tech Bio companies at different growth stages (pre-seed, seed & series A). Prior, Davide was a Vice President in the SVB UK Early-Stage Healthcare division. Davide is a former scientist with advanced degrees (Ph.D. in Immunology & M.Sc. in Medical Biotechnology) and experience in both the financial/banking sector and medical research sector including roles at world-leading research institutions such as King's College London (KCL) and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI)/Harvard.

 

Michaela Broadhurst

Associate Director, Corporate Development & Strategic Initiatives, Genomics Ltd

Michaela is Head of Corporate Development and Strategy at Genomics Ltd, where she drives growth, fundraising, and strategic partnerships across the company’s healthcare and life sciences businesses. She joined Genomics nearly four years ago from life sciences consulting, where she advised global biopharma clients on commercial strategy and market access.

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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Olivia Cavlan

Chief Corporate Development and Strategy Officer, Alchemab

Olivia Cavlan is a founding team member and Chief Corporate Development and Strategy Officer at Alchemab Therapeutics. Prior to Alchemab Olivia was an Investment Principal at SV Health Investors and a Partner with McKinsey & Company where she was part of the leadership team in the Healthcare Private Equity and Pharmaceutical practices. Alongside her role as a Non-Executive Director for the UK BioIndustry Association, Olivia is a member of the Investment Committee for Cancer Research UK’s (CRUK) Seed fund. She also co-founded and sits on the Board of Directors of Sevenless Therapeutics, a small molecule pain company. Olivia is a medic originally, holding an MBChB in Medicine and a BSc in Pharmacology from Bristol University.

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Ruth Faram

Co-founder & CSO, SymphoRNA

Dr. Ruth Helen Faram is Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at SymphoRNA (previously Uncommon Bio), where she leads the R&D & scientific strategy including novel technologies and IP development in the field of RNA and drug delivery.

Ruth brings extensive years of experience in cell and molecular biology, working with cutting edge, innovative technologies. She holds a BSc. Neuroscience from University College London, MSc. Pharmacology from the University of Oxford and D.Phil in Anatomical Neuropharmacology from the University of Oxford, where she specialised in novel cell characterisation and stem cell technologies.  She subsequently held three postdoctoral positions within the University of Oxford as part of Innovation Medicines Initiative for Stem Cells in Drug Discovery, also receiving scholarships from the Medical Research Council and Alzheimer’s Research UK, working with iPSCs following their discovery as a Nobel Prize winning technology in 2012.

She is inventor on 7 patents (pending). She is a mum to 6 year old Felix, and 1 year old Florence, and is a seasoned marathon runner & cyclist. 

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Steve Gardner

CEO & Co-founder, PrecisionLife Ltd

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Tim Guilliams

Co-Founder and CEO, Healx

Tim Guilliams is a tech entrepreneur based in the Cambridge Cluster, UK, with a deep passion for leveraging AI to accelerate treatments for rare diseases.
He is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Healx Ltd, an AI-powered, patient-centric biotech company that is revolutionising the discovery and development of treatments for rare diseases at scale. Under his leadership, Healx has raised over $100 million and has garnered numerous accolades for its innovative approach.

As CEO of Healx, Tim was honoured with the 'Well Founded Founder/CEO Leadership Award' for his pioneering contributions to HealthTech and patient impact, as well as his commitment to fostering a healthy workplace culture. He has also been recognized in The Sunday Times Maserati 100 list of entrepreneurs, The Telegraph’s Tech 100, and InVivo’s 30 Rising Leaders in the Life Sciences, among other prestigious lists.

In addition to his work at Healx, Tim is the Founding Director of the Cambridge Rare Disease Network (CamRARE), a charity dedicated to improving the lives of those affected by rare diseases.

Tim earned his PhD in Biophysics and Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry. Before moving to Cambridge, he completed an MEng in Bio- and Chemical Engineering at the University of Brussels

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Nix Hall

Co-Founder & CTO, New Wave Biotech

Nix Hall is the Co-Founder and CTO of New Wave Biotech. As CTO, she leads the technical strategy behind New Wave Biotech’s AI-powered simulation platform for downstream processing (DSP), innovating the software to enable biomanufacturers to scale more efficiently. Prior to New Wave Biotech, Nix spent around 10 years working on data engineering in a variety of startups and scale-ups, including as Tech Lead and first software hire at LabGenius, where she established the company’s data infrastructure, and shaped its early technical strategy.

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Amir Hasan

Chief Operating Officer, Ultromics

Amir has had a number of roles at Philips Healthcare ranging from marketing, business development, R&D and product management over the past 20 years. In his last role before joining Ultromics he was a Business Unit General Manager, leading a 300 person global team in Cardiology Informatics. 
Ultromics is a disruptive startup that utilizes AI to diagnose heart disease from Echocardiographic scans of the heart. They recently partnered with both J&J Innovative Medicine and Pfizer to bring a new diagnostic to the market for the detection of Amyloidosis for which both companies have a therapeutic. His experience in both large and small companies gives him a unique perspective on how to collaborate to drive innovation. 

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Dara Henry

COO, Prokarium

No bio provided

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Trevor Howe

Janssen Fellow, Director and Head of Translational Genomics, Johnson & Johnson Innovation

Trevor is a Janssen Fellow and Head of Translational Genomics for Johnson & Johnson Innovation. He is responsible for identifying and validating drug targets or pathways from human genetic signatures though internal and external collaborations.
He joined Janssen in 2003 where he formed the Molecular Informatics group to focus on structural biology, biophysics & computational methods for ligand identification and optimisation in all phases of pre-clinical drug discovery process.

Prior to Trevor’s current Johnson & Johnson/Janssen career, he headed the worldwide Computational Chemistry Council for Novartis from 1997 – 2003. He also led several immunology projects which resulted in successful clinical candidates for the respiratory disease therapeutic area. From 1990 – 1997 Trevor worked for Lilly establishing their computational chemistry department in the UK, developing Bayesian analysis methods. He was simultaneously a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford with Prof Graham Richards.
Trevor’s first degree was in Chemistry at the University of Exeter which was followed by a PhD at the University of East Anglia on small molecule conformation. From 1988 – 1990 he was a postdoctoral researcher at SUNY, Buffalo, USA studying glucosidase inhibition for applications to HIV.

Trevor serves on several UK Research Council scientific advisory bodies particularly in the area of genomics. He has been a visiting Industrial Fellow at Bristol University was a co-founder of the Phenotypic Discovery Initiative (http://npsc.ac.uk/consortia) which he established with the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Dundee. In 2019 he was the J&J scientific lead for a consortium which executed the world’s biggest whole genome sequencing project on the 500,000 samples in the UK BioBank. He is the scientific lead for J&J’s involvement in Our Future Health (OFH, https://ourfuturehealth.org.uk) and represents all industry members on the Scientific Advisory Board to OFH. He has led J&J partnerships in utilisation of genomic data particularly in the area of non-coding variants.

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Emma Lawrence

Head of Data Tech Policy and Public Affairs, 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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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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Emilia Molimpakis

Co-Founder & CEO, thymia

Dr Emilia Molimpakis is the CEO & Co-founder of thymia, building world-first biomarker-powered Voice AI Agents that measure health from 15 seconds of speech.

Our clinical-grade, regulated biomarkers detect mental health conditions, wellness indicators, and physical health issues with >90% accuracy - now deployed through our own health & safety voice agents across healthcare, automotive, and defence sectors globally. Previously spent 12 years researching language as a biomarker for cognitive health, mostly at UCL (PhD & post-docs in Neuroscience and Linguistics). Thought leader in mental health and voice AI, recently named one of TIME's World's Top HealthTech Companies.

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Agata Nyga

CEO and Founder, SynLaia Innovations

Dr Agata Nyga, CEO and Founder of SynLaia Innovations, an academic-turned-entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in bioengineering and mechanobiology. She has led research projects at leading international institutions and authored more than 30 peer-reviewed publications. Alongside her academic work, Agata has delivered industry-led R&D initiatives and helped establish operations within emerging life sciences companies.

In January 2025, she founded SynLaia to bring mechanomics into the drug discovery space - developing a first-in-class platform for mapping and modulating the mechanical states of cells and tissues across health and disease.

Agata is also actively involved in science policy. Between 2020 and 2024, she led strategic initiatives at the Polonium Foundation as Research & Policy Team Lead and now serves on its Advisory Board. She is also a board member of the Connects-UK project, supporting international collaboration in science and innovation.

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Dino Oglić

Senior Director & Head of Research, AstraZeneca UK Ltd

Dino Oglic is Senior Director and Head of Research at AstraZeneca’s Center for AI in Cambridge, UK, an AI unit within Data Sciences & AI and part of BioPharmaceuticals R&D. He leads efforts to build machine learning products and solutions that assist the drug discovery pipeline and aid in understanding of biology and medicinal chemistry. His research expertise spans deep learning, self-supervised and unsupervised learning, audio and signal processing, kernel methods, and learning theory. In recent years, he has focused on AI for drug discovery across multiple modalities, including peptides, nanobodies, and antibodies.

Pahini Pandya

CEO and Founder, Panakeia

Dr Pahini Pandya is the CEO and Founder of Panakeia, a pioneering AI-driven molecular profiling company.  Panakeia’s AI-driven software provides comprehensive multi-omic information (DNA, RNA, protein, metabolite changes) directly from routinely used images of tissues and cells in minutes instead of days or weeks. The software enables same-day treatment decision-making in the clinic and fast-tracks drug development for biopharma without the need for time and resource intensive laboratory tests.

Trained as a cancer researcher. Pahini spent the last decade furthering translational research in the field. She pursued a PhD in cancer biophysics at King’s College London, a postdoc at the University of Cambridge and has several publications in top journals.

Educated at the Stanford and Cambridge business schools, Pahini has also held several leadership positions across entrepreneurial organisations and helped numerous start-ups commercialise research. She has been recognised as Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum, and received multiple awards for entrepreneurship.

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Michalis Papadakis

CEO and Co-founder, Brainomix

Dr Michalis Papadakis is the CEO and co-founder of Brainomix. He leads the management team, commercial strategy, fund raising, and corporate partnerships. He has grown the company from the ground up, building the company’s global presence and has raised more than £30 million of private investment and public funding. When he founded Brainomix he was the Scientific Director of the preclinical stroke lab at the University of Oxford. He has a BSc Honours in Biochemistry from Imperial College London and a PhD in neurosciences from UCL School of Pharmacy. He has been an invited speaker at international scientific and innovation conferences.

Brainomix specializes in the creation of AI-powered software for better treatment decisions in stroke and lung fibrosis. With origins as a spin-out from the University of Oxford, Brainomix is an expanding commercial-stage company that has innovated award-winning software solutions used in more than 30 countries worldwide. Its Brainomix 360 platform, provides clinicians with the most comprehensive stroke imaging solution, driving increased treatment rates, and improving outcomes for patients.

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Alan Payne

Group Product & Engineering Director, The Access Group

Alan is a Digital and Technology leader with over 30 years’ experience in Healthcare, Health Insurance, Banking and global Capital Markets, specialising in digital innovation across multiple support functions. 

He has held executive technology and engineering leadership positions at Aetna International, Nuffield Health, BUPA, Oracle and JPMorganChase, driving product development, transformation and innovation across health and technology. 

His current position is Group Product and Engineering Director for the Health, Support & Care division at The Access Group, where he is responsible for the overall vision, direction and delivery of the technology to digitise and integrate health and care.   

He holds an Honorary Professorship of AI at the University College London Faculty of Engineering (Intelligent Systems) and has specific research interests in Digital Health, Artificial Intelligence and Entrepreneurship.  

 

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Dominick Peasley

CEO, SPRK Capital

Dominick is CEO of SPRK Capital. Prior to joining SPRK he was responsible for all lending capital at Funding Circle, the largest platform lender to small businesses in the UK. He joined pre-IPO to institutionalise their capital base and during his tenure there raised over £5bn of new capital to support SMEs in the UK. He was instrumental in the UK Government loan schemes, through CBILS, BBLS and most recently the RLS programme.

Before that, Dominick co-founded Capital-B a FinTech advisory and capital placement agency focused on developing lending businesses. Prior to this Dominick worked for Goldman Sachs where he headed distribution for its asset management business in the UK and with global banks. Dominick qualified as a chartered accountant with PwC and is a Fellow of the ICAEW. He holds a Masters in Engineering from Durham University.

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David Powell

President, Drug Discovery , Relation Therapeutics

Dave Powell, PhD, is President of Drug Discovery at Relation, an end-to-end biotech developing transformational medicines, with technology at its core. At Relation, Dave leads experimental drug discovery efforts, including functional genomics, tissue profiling, and target validation, and plays a key role in shaping the company’s early pipeline and future modalities.

Dave is a seasoned R&D leader with more than 25 years of experience across GSK, Summit Therapeutics, and LifeArc, where he served as CSO and led a 150+ person team spanning biologics discovery, small molecule chemistry, diagnostics development, and data sciences. His career spans discovery through Phase 3 clinical trials, with particular strength in preclinical asset progression.

A progressive and collaborative leader, Dave is known for his ability to build and scale high-performing teams and for his laser focus on delivering science that makes a difference for patients.

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Christina Rode

Founder & CEO, Hulk Bio

Christina Rode is the Founder and CEO of Hulk Bio, a pioneering company producing authentic human milk bioactives through cell-based technology. Hulk Bio’s platform enables infant nutrition companies to access essential components of human milk at scale, helping to close the nutritional gap between formula and breastfeeding. With proof-of-concept achieved and strong early interest from major food companies, Christina is now leading Hulk Bio through the next stage of growth: scaling production, expanding its product portfolio, and building global partnerships.

Before founding Hulk Bio, Christina led cell innovation R&D at Roslin Technologies and conducted her PhD and postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford, where she advanced our understanding of early fate decisions in stem cell. She brings a multidisciplinary approach to early-life nutrition, elevated by her unique perspective as both a scientist and a mother.

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Hendrik Runge

CEO, Cambridge Nucleomics

Hendrik gained extensive sequencing experience from his PhD in haematological malignancies at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. He has raised funding for his previous social venture and worked with the healthcare accelerator Start Codon in Cambridge.

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Vishal Sanchania

Commercial Director, Cambridge Consultants

Vishal Sanchania is a Commercial Director at Cambridge Consultants with >15 years of experience leading cutting edge biotechnology research across pharmaceutical, high value molecules, biocatalysis, automation, synthetic biology and AI disciplines.

Vishal has worked at the cutting edge of technology and biology convergence, having previously held VP R&D and Head of Biology roles in two of London’s vibrant biotechnology startups. Vishal led a multidisciplinary team of biologists, bioinformatician and process engineers to help make laboratory automation and DoE more accessible to scientists. He also enabled high-dimensional enzyme immobilization and AI applications in enzyme immobilization for pharmaceutical and high value biocatalysis applications.

At Cambridge Consultants, Vishal specialises in helping clients have critical multidisciplinary conversations and realise the potential of converging the physical sciences and AI with biology. He is excited by the prospect of helping clients achieve transformational innovation across their businesses by harnessing the deep tech capabilities of the Cambridge Consultants team

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Clare Terlouw

Head of LifeArc Ventures, LifeArc

Clare Terlouw is Head of LifeArc Ventures, responsible for LifeArc’s portfolio of direct and LP investments across the life sciences sector. The venture investment fund focuses on early stage life sciences companies at seed to Series A, with significant follow-on investment reserved for successful portfolio companies.

Clare has significant expertise in funding innovative life sciences companies in the private and public markets. She was previously Head of Corporate Development at Syncona Investment Management Ltd, a FTSE250 healthcare investment trust which builds and invests in life science companies, and has more than 15 years of biotech and healthcare financing experience as a UK investment banker at Nomura, Numis Securities and Peel Hunt. Clare was a physiotherapist in Canada prior to moving into finance.

Clare is a board member of the UK Biotechnology Industry Association and director of a number of venture-backed companies.

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Gavin Thomas

Co-founder & CSO, MORF-Bio

Gavin Thomas is a Prof of Microbiology at the University of York, UK, and is a co-founder of MORF-Bio, which was initiated from a large UKRI funded multi-omics project, DETOX, aiming to understand bacterial stress responses. Driven by a desire to make complex data accessible to lab-based scientists, he drove the development of new tools to enable easy web-based visualisation and analysis of complex data. Realising that there was a real need for intuitive tools to simplify bioinformatics, the DETOX team evolved into MORF-Bio, a spin-out from the University of York. MORF aims to make the analysis of genomes and other types of data accessible and shareable for experimental scientists to get more from their data. Prof. Thomas has published over 100 papers on bacterial genetics, genomics, physiology, biochemistry, structural biology and multi-omics applied to understanding bacterial function in health, disease and biotechnology. His work has been cited over 10,000 times.

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David Thornton

President, Genomics Limited

David Thornton joined Genomics Limited in September 2024 as President, where he assumed responsibility for the company's internal operations, with a strategic focus on scaling its existing businesses. 

David transitioned to Genomics from IQVIA, a Fortune 500 corporation specializing in Human Data Science. During his tenure at IQVIA as Senior Vice President and a member of the Global Executive Leadership Group, he led the Commercial Engagement Services Division, driving advancements in patient and commercial engagement through the application of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced data analytics. His prior leadership roles at IQVIA include overseeing Biotech Commercial teams across Europe and directing business development initiatives for Real World Evidence throughout the U.S., EMEA, and Asia Pacific regions.  

Earlier in his career, David held diverse leadership and advisory positions within various healthcare-focused enterprises.

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Vineeta Tripathi

Founding CEO, Vitarka Therapeutics

As the founding CEO of Vitarka Therapeutics, Vineeta has more than 15 years’ experience in drug development. She has led multi-million-pound multi-site projects at UCL, Boehringer Ingelheim and Ipsen Bioinnovation. As an asset leader, she has delivered 2x therapeutics being tested in 6x clinical trials and 3x therapeutics for clinical development. She is a co-inventor on 13x granted patents and 4x filed patents. She co-discovered mutations and functional properties of TDP-43 gene which causes Motor Neuron Disease. This was a breakthrough discovery, with an entire disease pathology now termed as “TDP-43 proteinopathies”, impacting over 50 million patients globally. Her work as first author and co-author is published in several imminent journals such as Science, Nature, Nature Neuroscience, PNAS, etc. with a citation record of >7000.

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Russ Tucker

Co-founder and CEO, twig

Russ is co-founder and CEO at twig, a bioengineering start-up combining AI, robotics and biology, driving a global transition to bio-fermented ingredients in a way that benefits everyone – people, producers, and the planet. 

In addition to twig, Russ co-founded and led cultivated meat pioneer Ivy Farm, a spin-out from the University of Oxford that created the first cultivated meat sausage and scotch egg, and has grown to a team of over 60. 

Prior to starting companies, Russ worked as a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group.  He holds a D.Phil. in Biomedical Engineering from Oxford, a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Loughborough and is a Fellow Chartered Accountant. 

 

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Sophie Vaud

Head of Microbial Engineering, Colorifix

No bio provided

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Divya Vijay Pratheek

Vice President, Product + Marketing, Ribbon Bio

Divya Vijay Pratheek has over a decade of experience shaping product strategy and commercialisation in the biotech sector across Germany and the UK having launched multiple product portfolios across different applications. She has held roles at QIAGEN, Congenica, Automata, and currently Ribbon Bio, where she focuses on enabling synthetic DNA technologies to reach their full impact. With a foundation in microbiology and communication sciences, Divya is passionate about bridging technical innovation with market adoption

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Jane Wall

Managing Director, BIA

What does your role at BIA involve?
Strategic leadership of the organisation and oversight of P&L to ensure that BIA is a sustainable, successful, and ever-evolving association. Serving the needs of existing members, growing new communities, and increasing member benefit; producing sector-leading thought leadership and events, growing influence, reach and impact.

Previous experience & achievements
25 years of experience managing teams in academic publishing and membership organisations: providing strategic and editorial direction combined with business acumen; driving operational, organisational and community development, profitability, and innovation. Previous roles at Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis (Informa PLC), Oxford Brookes University, Fire Protection Association and Food and Drink Federation. Jane holds a first degree in Italian and European Literature from Warwick University, MA in Social Anthropology from SOAS and MBA from Oxford Brookes Business School.

If you could invite any scientist to dinner, who would it be?
Galileo Galilei: having been slightly obsessed with Italian culture and the Renaissance, I was fascinated by Florence, the Medicis and their patronage of artists and scientists. I am always in awe of the bravery and foresight of individuals willing to push human understanding beyond what was/is generally acceptable at the time: Galileo was willing to risk the ire of the Inquisition and to live condemned as a heretic in times when the punishment was extreme – to become the ‘father of modern science’.

Ian Wood

Clinical Director, Optum UK

Dr Ian Wood is a Clinical Director at Optum UK.  He joined EMIS in 2017 delivering clinical insight into the ongoing design, delivery and safety of EMIS Web, the company’s flagship product used in the majority of General Practice in the NHS.   He also led the business clinically in designing population health systems supporting clinical care, analytics and research within the UK.

Ian is a practicing NHS GP in Buckinghamshire, having trained at the University of Bristol and subsequently worked through NHS settings in Oxford and the surrounding Thames Valley region.  He is the Medical Director for Big Health, a digital therapeutics company building evidence-based mental health treatments in use in the NHS and US.  He has also held national and regional roles for the Royal College of General Practitioners.

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Kelly Zalocusky

Executive Director of Computational Biology, Recursion

Kelly Zalocusky, Ph.D., is Senior Director of Computational Biology, Joint Technical Team Lead of Recurison's 10-year neuroscience collaboration with Roche/Genentech, and Site Lead for Recursion's London Office. Scientifically, her focus is on deploying high-throughput imaging and AI models for novel drug development in neuroscience, and she leads scientific teams focused on applying Recursion's novel platform and approach to the discovery of therapies to radically improve patients’ lives. She is a Neuroscientist by training and received her bachelor's degree from Hendrix College, and Ph.D. from Stanford University.

 

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