Julian Beach
Anthony Harnden
Maria Koufali
Louise Knowles
James Pound
Sam Roberts
Lawrence Tallon
Event Supporters
BIA Annual Supporters
Julian oversees the portfolio that is designed to ensure the quality and access of products to the UK market - this includes scientific advice, licensing assessment, marketing authorisations for all innovative and established medicines.
Julian is an experienced leader with a demonstrated history of Quality, Regulatory and Operations in the pharmaceuticals industry. Skilled in Quality, Operations and Digitalisation of Systems, Operations Management delivery including OpEX / Six Sigma with a love for people development. Julian has strong links to industry and regulatory bodies with quality focus. He is a fellow of the RSC, with an MBA from Henley Business School, adding to BSc (Hons), Chartered Chemist and Chartered Scientist.
Professor Anthony Harnden is the chair of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). He is professor of primary care at the University of Oxford and until December 2024, was a registrant council member of the General Medical Council and Chair of the Remuneration Committee. He was also deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCV), playing a key role in ensuring public trust and patient safety during the distribution of the Covid vaccine. Anthony has over 40 years of experience working for NHS, mostly as a general practitioner in Wheatley, Oxfordshire. He is particularly focused on protecting patient safety through robust surveillance and embracing risk-proportionate regulation to maintain the UK as a global regulator of excellence.
Dr Maria Koufali is the Life Sciences Industry Director at the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and formerly led the UK Vaccine Innovation Pathway as Head of the programme.
Maria Koufali, is an experienced senior leader in life sciences research and innovation, bringing over 20 years of cross-sector expertise in working with global pharmaceutical companies, digital health firms, diagnostics developers, and MedTech SMEs. She holds a PhD in Pharmacology and Neuroscience, an MBA (Distinction), and is the first NHS R&D Director nationally to be awarded the Nye Bevan Executive Health Leadership Award. Maria currently leads the UK Vaccine Innovation Pathway at NIHR/DHSC, a nationally mandated clinical trials accelerator. Maria currently serves as Trustee and Chair of the Industry Advisory Board at the BBSRC-funded Quadram Institute, where she shapes translational and commercial strategy. She brings to the new contract a proven ability to develop national infrastructure, deliver commercial growth, and work across government and industry to accelerate innovation that benefits patients and the UK economy.
Louise has over 17 years of experience working in Scientific roles across the Civil Service, and joined the MHRA in October 2023. The Innovation Accelerator and Regulatory Science team provides innovators enhanced access to MHRA scientific expertise and regulatory guidance, bringing together the work of the Innovation Office, Horizon Scanning functions as well as leading on the delivery of the Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway (ILAP) and the Innovative Devices Access Pathway (IDAP). She was previously the Head of Research Capacity and Growth at DHSC and part of the leadership team for the National Institute for Health and Care Research, providing the strategic leadership and oversight of the NIHR Translational Research Infrastructure and NIHR Clinical Research Network as well as leading work to deliver on the ambitions set out in the UK Vision for Clinical Research Delivery. Prior to her role in DHSC she was a Foresight Researcher at the Government Office for Science and led a number of Research Programmes for the Food Standards Agency.
James Pound joined the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in 2008. He has worked in a variety of roles within the MHRA and is an executive leader within the Agency with responsibility for our Innovation Accelerator (the home of our innovative pathways for medicines and medical devices), the clinical investigations and trials group and the standards and compliance function which includes our Medicines GXP compliance teams, British Pharmacopoeia and medical devices audit and compliance. James led the cross-Agency response to clinical trial assessment delays in 2023 which were successfully eliminated in Autumn 2023 with sustained performance by the Agency since then.
He holds an honours degree in Chemistry and has previously worked in a variety of roles in development and manufacturing in the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr Sam Roberts is the chief executive of NICE.
Before joining NICE in February 2022, Sam was the managing director of health and care at Legal and General, a financial services firm. In this role, she had responsibility for identifying promising areas for investment across health and care.
Prior to that, Sam was the first chief executive of the Accelerated Access Collaborative. This is a national umbrella organisation for health innovation, hosted by NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSEI).
She originally trained as a doctor and practiced medicine in South Africa, the UK, and Australia before undertaking an MBA. She then joined McKinsey and Company, where she worked in a wide range of industries before specialising in healthcare.
After McKinsey, Sam moved into the NHS as a senior manager at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She was also a director in UCLPartners, an Academic Health Sciences Centre and Network. Last year, she took on the role of director of innovation, research and life sciences at NHSEI.
Over the last 5 years Sam has become involved in research, working with health economic models to inform evidence-based policy at the London School of Economics. She then moved to the University of Oxford where she undertook a DPhil (Doctor of Philosophy).
Lawrence Tallon is the Chief Executive Officer at the MHRA (the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency). Before that, he was the Deputy Chief Executive at Guy's and St Thomas' (GSTT) NHS Foundation Trust, the largest and one of the most prestigious healthcare provider organisations in the UK. He joined GSTT in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, and immediately set to work on securing vital international supplies of medical equipment and PPE for the Trust and the wider UK supply lines.
He led the successful merger of GSTT with the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals in 2021, creating a power-house of cardio-respiratory medicine and research. His role includes oversight of the Trust's multiple major strategic changes programmes. Lawrence also leads the Trust's approach to Innovation and Improvement including the creation of the newly formed Centre for Innovation, Transformation and Improvement (CITI). He also sits on the Board of King's Health Partners Ventures, a limited company to accelerate spin out of Med Tech start-ups.
In the decade prior to joining GSTT, Lawrence worked in a range of strategy and leadership roles in university hospitals in the UK and overseas. He was Director of Strategy, Planning and Performance at University Hospitals Birmingham, Managing Director of the Shelford Group of UK university hospitals and Executive Director of Policy at Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar, one of the leading academic medical centres in the Middle East.
Lawrence began his career working for the UK Government in Whitehall, as a fast stream civil servant at the Department of Health, before working for the Secretary of State for Health and running the headquarters of the NHS Chief Executive. He worked on a range of high profile national policy issues, gaining cross government exposure to No.10 Downing Street, Her Majesty's Treasury and the Cabinet Office, and becoming a senior civil servant within the Department of Health.
He holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and a Master's degree in Global Health Policy from Imperial College London.